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EX280 · domain

Storage And Persistent Volumes

This domain covers how OpenShift Container Platform 4.14+ provisions, binds, and manages storage for workloads. You must configure ephemeral volumes, PersistentVolumeClaims, PersistentVolumes, and StorageClasses, and know how dynamic provisioning, access modes, and reclaim policies behave in a cluster. Tasks are performed with oc and YAML manifests.

67 questions17 easy27 medium23 hard

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What this domain covers

What to know about Storage And Persistent Volumes

You must create Pods with emptyDir, author PVC and PV manifests, and configure StorageClasses for dynamic provisioning. The most important thing is getting the PVC-to-PV binding right, including access modes, capacity, and StorageClass name, so the claim binds and mounts correctly.

Choosing emptyDir for pod-lifetime scratch versus persistent volume types in a Pod spec

Creating and binding PersistentVolumeClaims to PersistentVolumes using oc and YAML

Configuring StorageClass parameters, reclaimPolicy, and volumeBindingMode for dynamic provisioning

Enabling PVC expansion by setting allowVolumeExpansion on the StorageClass

Watch out for

Common Storage And Persistent Volumes exam traps

  • ▸Treating a PersistentVolume as namespaced; PVs are cluster-scoped while PVCs are namespaced, so binding rules differ.
  • ▸Forgetting that allowVolumeExpansion must be set on the StorageClass before any PVC can be resized.
  • ▸Assuming emptyDir survives pod deletion; it is deleted with the pod and is not persistent storage.

Question index

All Storage And Persistent Volumes questions (67)

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1

A developer deploys an application that mounts a PVC in read-only mode inside the pod specification. How is this configured in the Pod's volumeMounts?

Medium
2

Which TWO characteristics describe StorageClasses in OpenShift?

Medium
3

Where are PersistentVolumeClaims located in terms of OpenShift's API scope?

Easy
4

A developer needs to mount an existing PersistentVolumeClaim into a pod, but the application requires that the volume be mounted read-only to prevent accidental writes. The PVC was created with accessMode ReadWriteOnce. Which configuration in the pod's volumeMounts is correct?

Hard
5

What is the effect of setting 'allowVolumeExpansion: true' in a StorageClass?

Medium
6

A cluster administrator needs to configure a generic ephemeral inline volume in a Pod specification. Where is the volume defined?

Hard
7

What is the primary function of a CSI (Container Storage Interface) Driver Operator in OpenShift?

Medium
8

You want to restore an existing VolumeSnapshot into a new PersistentVolumeClaim. Which field in the PVC specification must reference the VolumeSnapshot?

Medium
9

An application pod requires concurrent read and write access to the same storage volume from multiple worker nodes simultaneously. Which access mode must be specified in the PersistentVolumeClaim to satisfy this requirement?

Easy
10

Which THREE actions are required when manually setting up a pre-provisioned PersistentVolume backed by an existing storage asset?

Hard
11

Which component in OpenShift is responsible for watching PersistentVolumeClaims and dynamically provisioning PersistentVolumes when supported by a StorageClass?

Easy
12

An administrator needs to prune or reclaim dangling VolumeSnapshotContent objects whose parent VolumeSnapshots have already been deleted, but the reclaim policy was set incorrectly. How can this be resolved?

Hard
13

Which access mode specifies that a volume can be mounted as read-write by a single node?

Easy
14

An administrator needs to inspect all StorageClasses available in an OpenShift cluster using the OpenShift CLI. Which command should be executed?

Easy
15

A cluster administrator wants to restrict a specific storage class so that only members of a designated OpenShift project can create PVCs referencing it. How is this typically enforced in OpenShift?

Medium
16

A PersistentVolumeClaim is stuck in Pending state. The administrator checks and finds that the requested StorageClass does not exist. What is the most likely cause?

Easy
17

A developer's pod is stuck in ContainerCreating because its PersistentVolumeClaim is bound to a PersistentVolume that was previously attached to a node that has since gone offline without graceful detach. The CSI driver reports the volume as still attached to the failed node. Which action should the administrator take to allow the pod to start on a healthy node?

Hard
18

An administrator is configuring ephemeral storage limits for containers in a namespace. Where must these limits be defined to enforce maximum local scratch space usage per container?

Hard
19

An administrator is reviewing PersistentVolumes and notices several PVs stuck in a Terminating state. What is the most common reason a PV cannot be deleted immediately?

Medium
20

An administrator needs to deploy a StorageClass that automatically provisions volumes only when a PersistentVolumeClaim is created and consumed by a Pod. Which StorageClass parameter determines this behavior?

Easy
21

You are examining a PersistentVolume in OpenShift and notice its status is Released. What does this indicate?

Medium
22

A developer deploys a pod with an emptyDir volume. The application running inside writes temporary files. What happens to these files when the container crashes and restarts within the same pod?

Hard
23

Which TWO methods can be used to populate data into a newly created PersistentVolumeClaim during provisioning?

Medium
24

An administrator needs to back up application data stored on an OpenShift PVC. Which object must be created to initiate the snapshot process via the CSI driver?

Medium
25

Which THREE items can be inspected using 'oc describe' when troubleshooting a failing storage attachment in OpenShift?

Hard
26

An administrator wants to verify which CSI driver plugins are registered and active in an OpenShift cluster. Which cluster-scoped resource should they query?

Hard
27

An administrator wants to use raw block storage (Block Volume Mode) rather than a mounted filesystem for a high-performance database running on OpenShift. How should the volume mode be specified in the PersistentVolumeClaim?

Hard
28

Which TWO conditions will prevent a pod from successfully mounting a PersistentVolumeClaim?

Medium
29

A cluster administrator has created a VolumeSnapshotClass and a VolumeSnapshot object targeting an active PVC. However, the VolumeSnapshot status never shows ready to use, and the underlying storage provider logs indicate snapshot creation failed due to missing cluster permissions. Which core OpenShift operator is primarily responsible for managing volume snapshot controllers and CRDs in OpenShift 4.14?

Hard
30

What is the primary difference between PersistentVolumes (PVs) and PersistentVolumeClaims (PVCs)?

Easy
31

A team maintains a StatefulSet named `orders` with three replicas in the `sales` namespace. Each replica must receive its own 20Gi PersistentVolumeClaim that survives Pod restarts and rescheduling, and the storage backend supports the ReadWriteOnce access mode. The administrator needs to define the storage requirement so that every replica automatically gets an independent, stable PVC bound before the Pod starts. Which approach should the administrator use?

Hard
32

A cluster administrator wants to create a VolumeSnapshot of a database PVC. Which API group must the VolumeSnapshotClass belong to?

Medium
33

A developer wants to ensure that a pod's temporary storage does not exceed 2Gi and that the pod is terminated or throttled if it exceeds this limit. Where should this ephemeral storage limit be declared?

Medium
34

An administrator is configuring a new StorageClass in OpenShift Container Platform 4.14. Which TWO parameters or fields are valid and commonly used specifications within a StorageClass manifest? (Choose TWO)

Medium
35

An administrator must grant a service account permission to create and manage PersistentVolumeClaims in the project 'analytics', while allowing it to view but not modify PersistentVolumes cluster-wide. Which two actions satisfy these requirements? (Choose two.)

Medium
36

A pod fails to start, and the event log shows a Multi-Attach error for volume 'pvc-xyz'. What is the root cause of this error?

Medium
37

Which YAML key in a StorageClass definition specifies the CSI plugin responsible for provisioning the storage?

Easy
38

An administrator creates a StorageClass with volumeBindingMode: WaitForFirstConsumer. A user creates a PVC using this StorageClass. What will be the initial phase of the PVC?

Hard
39

An administrator configures a Pod with a volume type of hostPath. What is a key security risk or operational limitation of using hostPath in a production multi-tenant OpenShift cluster?

Hard
40

An administrator is defining a StorageClass that should use the CSI driver 'csi.example.com' and allow volume expansion. The StorageClass must also have a parameter 'type: fast'. Which YAML snippet correctly defines this StorageClass?

Medium
41

An administrator is troubleshooting a storage performance issue on an OpenShift cluster using Container Storage Interface (CSI) drivers. Which THREE actions or diagnostic commands are effective for investigating CSI driver health and provisioner issues? (Choose THREE)

Hard
42

An OpenShift administrator needs to allow users to expand the storage capacity of existing PersistentVolumeClaims without restarting their applications. Which action must be taken first to enable this capability?

Medium
43

A cluster administrator needs to inspect the current bindings and capacities of all PersistentVolumes across the entire OpenShift cluster. Which CLI command should be used?

Medium
44

Which THREE factors influence whether a pod requesting a storage volume can be successfully scheduled to a specific worker node when using topology-aware storage?

Hard
45

Which THREE parameters or fields are valid when configuring a StorageClass object in OpenShift 4.14+?

Hard
46

An administrator is configuring topology-aware storage provisioning. A StorageClass uses volumeBindingMode: WaitForFirstConsumer. When is the PersistentVolume actually created?

Hard
47

Which resource represents the physical or cloud storage provisioned in the cluster by an administrator, independent of any user namespace claims?

Easy
48

Which TWO of the following are valid volume modes supported by PersistentVolumes and PersistentVolumeClaims in OpenShift?

Medium
49

An application running in OpenShift requires scratch space that lives and dies strictly with the Pod lifecycle, but needs to be mounted from a high-performance cluster-managed storage backend rather than local ephemeral node storage. Which feature should an administrator configure?

Hard
50

Which field in a PersistentVolumeClaim specifies the minimum amount of storage space required by the workload?

Easy
51

An administrator needs to increase the size of an existing PVC bound to a gp3 storage class in an OpenShift cluster. What is the mandatory first step before editing the PVC spec?

Hard
52

Which object defines the parameters used by a storage provider to take snapshots of persistent volumes in OpenShift?

Easy
53

Which command allows an administrator to view details, including events and current binding status, of a specific PersistentVolume named 'pv-data01'?

Easy
54

Which TWO volume types are considered ephemeral storage patterns native to Kubernetes and OpenShift?

Medium
55

An administrator is configuring a PersistentVolume to be used by multiple pods across different nodes. The storage backend supports ReadWriteMany. Which two steps are required to ensure the volume is mounted correctly in all pods? (Choose two.)

Medium
56

Which command is used to delete a PersistentVolumeClaim named 'my-app-pvc' in the current project?

Easy
57

An OpenShift cluster uses a CSI driver that supports volume cloning. A user wants to clone an existing PVC named 'data-pvc' into a new PVC named 'clone-pvc'. How should the dataSource be specified?

Hard
58

A cluster administrator is preparing a PersistentVolume for a database that must survive node failures and be reattached to a rescheduled pod. The storage backend is a CSI driver that supports topology-aware provisioning. Which access mode should the administrator specify in the PersistentVolumeClaim to allow the volume to be mounted as read-write by a single node at a time?

Easy
59

A cluster administrator has deleted a PersistentVolumeClaim, but the underlying PersistentVolume still exists in the cluster with a Released status and its data remains intact on the storage backend. What is the most likely cause of this behavior?

Medium
60

A user creates a PVC, but the storage backend fails to provision the volume. Where can the administrator look to find detailed error messages emitted by the external provisioner controller?

Medium
61

Which OpenShift CLI command is used to display all PersistentVolumeClaims in the current project along with their bound PersistentVolumes and storage classes?

Easy
62

A cluster operator is reviewing the volume snapshot implementation in an OpenShift 4.14 environment. Which THREE components or resources are required to successfully perform and manage volume snapshots? (Choose THREE)

Hard
63

A stateful application needs its PersistentVolume to be bound only after the pod requesting it is assigned to a specific worker node, to avoid topology mismatch issues. Which StorageClass parameter achieves this?

Medium
64

An administrator needs to set a default StorageClass for the entire OpenShift cluster so that PVCs without a storageClassName specified automatically use it. How is this configured?

Medium
65

A cluster administrator notices that a PVC stuck in the Pending state references a StorageClass with volumeBindingMode set to WaitForFirstConsumer. What action will cause the PVC to bind?

Medium
66

You need to provide temporary scratch space for a container that shares the pod's lifetime and is cleared when the pod is deleted. Which volume type should you configure in the Pod specification?

Easy
67

An administrator expands a PVC from 10Gi to 50Gi. The underlying cloud storage volume is successfully resized, but inside the running pod, 'df -h' still reports the size as 10Gi. What is the most likely reason?

Hard

Frequently asked questions

What does the Storage And Persistent Volumes domain cover on the EX280 exam?
You must create Pods with emptyDir, author PVC and PV manifests, and configure StorageClasses for dynamic provisioning. The most important thing is getting the PVC-to-PV binding right, including access modes, capacity, and StorageClass name, so the claim binds and mounts correctly.
How many questions are in this domain?
This page lists all 67 Storage And Persistent Volumes questions in the EX280 question bank. The actual exam draws from this domain proportionally to its weighting in the official exam blueprint.
What is the best way to practise this domain?
Start with a short focused session (10 questions) to identify gaps, then work through explanations. Repeat with a longer session once the weak areas feel solid.
Can I practise only Storage And Persistent Volumes questions?
Yes — the session launcher on this page filters questions to this domain only. Choose any session length for inline explanations and scoring.
Red Hat Certified OpenShift Administrator (EX280, OpenShift Container Platform 4.14+) (EX280) Storage And Persistent Volumes Practice Questions