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Hands-on Lab·Kubernetes and Cloud Native Security Associate

Storage Security: StorageClass, PV and CSI

Storage is a component like the kubelet or etcd, and it has its own security questions: who may provision it, where the bytes actually live, and what happens to them when the workload goes away. This guide answers all three on a cluster that can provision nothing at all - which is the honest starting point.

Cluster Component Security Guide 17 of 42 Intermediate

Written against the versions above. A default kubeadm cluster ships no StorageClass and no CSI driver. A PersistentVolume created by hand defaults to `persistentVolumeReclaimPolicy: Retain`, which is why the data below survives its claim.

The cka5001 cluster: one control plane and 3 schedulable workers, on Cilium.
Server NameIP AddressOSRolesCPURAMHDD
CKA5001192.168.0.41Ubuntu 26.04 LTSControl Plane Node (tainted NoSchedule)2 Core4 GB50 GB
CKA5001-NODE01192.168.0.42Ubuntu 26.04 LTSWorker Node2 Core4 GB50 GB
CKA5001-NODE02192.168.0.43Ubuntu 26.04 LTSWorker Node2 Core4 GB50 GB
CKA5001-NODE03192.168.0.44Ubuntu 26.04 LTSWorker Node2 Core4 GB50 GB

Before you start

  1. What a default cluster can provision, which is nothing

  2. A claim that nothing answers

  3. A PersistentVolume you create by hand

  4. Where the bytes actually live

  5. Deleting the claim does not delete the data

  6. Who is allowed to do any of this

Official sources