CKA Storage Practice Question
An administrator needs to expand an existing PersistentVolumeClaim. Which TWO conditions must be met?
⚠ Common exam trap
The CKA exam often tests the misconception that a PVC must be mounted or that the PV must be deleted before expansion, but the actual requirement is the StorageClass setting and the PVC being bound to a PV.
Answer choices
Why each option matters
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
✓
The StorageClass used by the PVC must have 'allowVolumeExpansion: true'.
The StorageClass must have `allowVolumeExpansion: true` to permit resizing of a PersistentVolumeClaim. This field is a prerequisite in the StorageClass definition; without it, the PVC cannot be expanded even if the underlying volume supports resizing. The CKA exam expects you to know that volume expansion is gated by this StorageClass setting.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
The PVC must be currently mounted by at least one pod.
Why it's wrong here
The mounted status of a PVC is irrelevant to whether its capacity can be increased. Kubernetes allows expanding a PersistentVolumeClaim even when it is not actively mounted by any pod, and several volume plugins (such as AWS EBS, GCE PD, and Azure Disk) support online expansion while the volume is in use. The actual prerequisites are a storage class with allowVolumeExpansion enabled and a PVC that has already been bound to a PersistentVolume.
- ✗
The underlying PersistentVolume must be deleted first.
Why it's wrong here
Deleting the PersistentVolume would be destructive and is never part of the resize workflow. When you increase the storage request on a bound PVC, the persistent volume controller expands the existing PV in place, updating its capacity and triggering a backend volume resize. The original PV must remain intact because its claim is being modified, not recreated, and deleting it would orphan or erase the underlying data.
- ✓
The StorageClass used by the PVC must have 'allowVolumeExpansion: true'.
Why this is correct
The allowVolumeExpansion field on the StorageClass is the key enabling factor for volume growth. When set to true, the storage provisioner and the external controller permit the PVC's requested size to be increased beyond its original value; without this flag, any edit to the PVC's storage request is rejected, since the storage class provider has not opted into supporting resizing. This setting is per storage class, so if the class lacks it, expansion is impossible regardless of the volume plugin.
- ✗
The PersistentVolume's reclaim policy must be Recycle.
Why it's wrong here
The reclaim policy determines whether a released PV is deleted, retained, or recycled, which is an entirely separate lifecycle concern from capacity expansion. Expansion is controlled by the storage class’s allowVolumeExpansion option and the underlying volume plugin's capabilities; the reclaim policy has no bearing on whether a claim can be enlarged. Moreover, Recycle is deprecated and rarely used, but even if it were set, it would not enable resizing.
- ✓
The PVC must be bound to a PersistentVolume.
Why this is correct
Expansion is an operation on an existing PersistentVolume that backs the claim, so the PVC must be in the Bound phase. A Pending PVC has no PersistentVolume bound to it and therefore no backend storage to resize; the request must be matched with a PV first. Once bound, increasing the PVC's storage request updates the associated PV capacity, and the storage backend is expanded accordingly.
Go deeper
Related to this question
Learn chapter
Deployments and ReplicaSets
Key term
Storage Classes
A Storage Class in Kubernetes is a template that defines how persistent storage is provisioned automatically, including the type of storage, performance characteristics, and provisioning policies.
Key term
Kubernetes Node Roles
Kubernetes Node Roles are labels assigned to machines in a cluster that define whether a node runs application containers (worker) or manages the cluster (control plane).
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Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This CKA practice question is part of Courseiva's free CNCF certification practice question bank. Courseiva provides original exam-style practice questions with explanations, topic-based practice, mock exams, readiness tracking, and study analytics to help learners prepare for the CKA exam.