Recover Persistent Volumes from "Terminating" State

Problem

  • Accidentally performed delete operation on PV instead of PVC.

$ kubectl delete pv --all -n <Namespace>

  • All PV's across the Cluster are in Terminating state. Need to recover or set it back to "Bound" state.

Environment

  • Platform9 Managed Kubernetes - All versions

]Cause

  • Default behaviour having the annotation kubernetes.io/pv-protection, it doesn't let controllers to delete PV till the time it is Bound with a PVC.

Resolution

  • As a workaround, the below operations can be carried out to try recover the PV back to bound state.

    • Take the backup of the existing PV

kubectl get pv <pvname> -o yaml > pv.yaml

- Edit the existing PV and delete the spec.claimRef section. This will delete the PV completely. The PVC would be in lost status initially when the PV is deleted

$ kubectl edit pv <pvname>

- Edit the backed up PV YAML and delete the metadata.deletionTimestamp line.

$ vi pv.yaml and delete the "metadata.deletionTimestamp" line

- Create the PV and wait for the status to be updated. After recreating the PV, the PVC should be back in bound status.

$ kubectl create -f pv.yaml
$ kubectl get pv
$ kubectl get pvc -n <namespace>


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Recover Persistent Volumes from "Terminating" StateProblemEnvironmentResolution