CKA Storage Practice Question
Which TWO of the following are valid reclaim policies for PersistentVolumes?
⚠ Common exam trap
Many exam-takers confuse deprecated or non-existent policies (like Recycle or Archive) with valid ones, or assume that Recycle is still supported, when in fact only Retain and Delete are currently valid for the CKA exam.
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
✓
Retain
Option A, Retain, is correct because it is one of the two officially supported PersistentVolume reclaim policies in Kubernetes: when a bound PVC is deleted, the PV is left intact and its data is preserved, requiring manual reclamation. Option B, Delete, is also correct because it is the other supported reclaim policy: it instructs Kubernetes to delete the PV object and, for dynamic provisioners, the underlying storage asset (e.g., an AWS EBS volume or GCE PD) when the PVC is released. Option C, Recycle, is not correct because although it existed as a legacy policy performing a basic scrub (rm -rf /thevolume/*) and making the volume available again, it was deprecated and removed in Kubernetes 1.14. Option D, Archive, is not a valid reclaim policy at all, and Option E, Reuse, is likewise not a recognized reclaim policy value in the PersistentVolume spec's persistentVolumeReclaimPolicy field, which accepts only Retain, Delete, and formerly Recycle.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✓
Retain
Why this is correct
Retain is a valid reclaim policy because when a PersistentVolume is released from a PersistentVolumeClaim, the underlying storage resource is kept intact. The volume is not automatically removed or scrubbed; instead, it remains in a Released state until a cluster administrator manually intervenes to recover or reuse it. This policy is essential for protecting critical data from accidental deletion.
- ✓
Delete
Why this is correct
Delete is a valid reclaim policy that instructs the storage backend to automatically remove the underlying storage asset when the corresponding PersistentVolume is released. This action includes deleting the physical volume, such as an AWS EBS or Google Compute Engine persistent disk, thereby freeing storage capacity but permanently losing the data. It is typically used with dynamic provisioning where volumes are considered ephemeral and disposable.
- ✗
Recycle
Why it's wrong here
Recycle is not a valid reclaim policy in current Kubernetes releases because it was deprecated and later removed. Historically, it performed a basic cleanup by recursively deleting files in the volume before making it available again, but it was deemed unreliable, inefficient, and insecure for production use. Starting with Kubernetes v1.20, Recycle has been formally removed, leaving only Retain and Delete as supported policies.
- ✗
Archive
Why it's wrong here
Archive is not a valid reclaim policy because Kubernetes does not define any such value in the PersistentVolumeSpec's reclaimPolicy field. The API only recognizes Retain, Delete, and the deprecated Recycle, so Archive is purely a conceptual suggestion that does not map to any implemented behavior. Submitting a PersistentVolume with reclaimPolicy: Archive would be rejected by the API server as an invalid value.
- ✗
Reuse
Why it's wrong here
Reuse is not a valid reclaim policy because no such value exists in the Kubernetes PersistentVolume API. While a volume can be reused after being released by manually changing its reclaim policy to Retain and clearing the claim reference, the system does not provide an automatic policy to rebind a released volume to a new claim. Therefore, Reuse is not recognized and behaves as an invalid configuration.
Go deeper
Related to this question
Learn chapter
Storage Basics and Volumes
Key term
Volumes
In Kubernetes, a volume is a storage resource that outlives the pod it belongs to, enabling data to persist across container restarts and be shared between containers in the same pod.
Key term
Ingress Resources
Ingress Resources are Kubernetes API objects that manage external access to services inside a cluster, typically HTTP and HTTPS traffic, by defining rules for routing requests based on hostnames and paths.
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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.