⚡PVC Stuck in Pending — Real Storage Debugging (EP3)

🎯 Why This Episode Matters

Most Kubernetes videos talk about Deployments, Services, and Ingress.
Very few talk about the thing that quietly blocks everything:

In real clusters, this looks like:

• Pods that never reach Running because volumes won’t attach

• PVCs that sit in Pending with no obvious error

• Teams blaming “Kubernetes storage” when the real problem is misconfiguration

You run:

kubectl describe pvc

…and all you see is:

• Status: Pending

• Events: no persistent volumes found

No clear stack trace.
No big red error message.
Just a silent blocker that keeps your app from starting.

Episode 3 is about that exact nightmare:

👉 A PVC that refuses to bind,
even though your YAML looks correct.

We don’t fix it with theory.
We walk through the same debugging flow real DevOps / SRE teams use in production.

📌 What We Build in Episode 3

Our repo for EP3 is a small but realistic storage setup:

• A simple application that expects a mounted data volume

• A PersistentVolumeClaim with specific size + access mode

• A cluster configured to use dynamic provisioning

• A deliberately broken StorageClass / configuration that prevents binding

In the video, we:

• Deploy the app with a PVC that never binds

• Watch the Pod sit in ContainerCreating / Pending

• Use kubectl describe pvc to inspect the claim

• Discover that Kubernetes can’t find / provision a suitable volume

• Fix the underlying storage misconfiguration and watch the PVC move to Bound

You see the exact commands, events, and status transitions that happen in a real cluster.

🚨 Live Incident: PVC Won’t Bind

We start where many engineers get stuck:

• Deployment applied

• Pod created

• No obvious red errors in kubectl get pods

But the storage layer tells a different story.

We run:

kubectl get pvc

and see:

NAME        STATUS    VOLUME   CAPACITY   ACCESS MODES   STORAGECLASS   AGE
app-data    Pending                                                   3m

On paper, nothing screams “fatal error”.
But the Pod is blocked, and the app never starts.

When we describe the PVC, Kubernetes quietly tells the truth:

kubectl describe pvc app-data

• Status: Pending

• Events show messages like:

  • no persistent volumes available for this claim

  • or failed to provision volume with StorageClass ...

This is the exact point where many people give up and blame “Kubernetes storage is hard”.

Instead, we use a structured approach.

🧭 The Debugging Flow We Use

In the episode, we follow a repeatable PVC incident playbook:

1️⃣ Describe the PVC

kubectl describe pvc app-data

We look for:

• Status (Pending, Bound)

• Events about provisioning failures

• Hints about StorageClass, size, access modes

2️⃣ Check StorageClasses

kubectl get sc

We verify:

• Does the StorageClass referenced in the PVC exist?

• Is there a default StorageClass?

• Is the provisioner correct (e.g., kubernetes.io/no-provisioner, disk.csi.azure.com, etc.)?

3️⃣ Validate the PVC spec

We confirm:

• Requested size (e.g., 1Gi)

• Access modes (ReadWriteOnce, ReadWriteMany, …)

• storageClassName is valid and spelled correctly

Even a single character typo is enough to stop dynamic provisioning.

4️⃣ Inspect available PVs (if using static volumes)

kubectl get pv

We check whether:

• Any PVs exist

• Capacity + access modes match the PVC

• claimRef is already used by something else

5️⃣ Reproduce + fix

Once we find the misconfiguration (for example, a wrong StorageClass name), we:

• Update the YAML

• Re-apply the StorageClass or PVC

• Watch the status transition from Pending → Bound

This becomes your go-to checklist any time a PVC refuses to bind.

♻️ The Fix: Making the PVC Finally Bind

In this episode, the root cause is a StorageClass issue — something that happens all the time when:

• Clusters are migrated

• CSI drivers change

• Default StorageClass is removed or renamed

We fix it by:

• Creating / correcting the StorageClass with the right provisioner

• Ensuring the PVC is targeting a valid class

• Re-applying the manifests so dynamic provisioning can succeed

Once fixed, the magic moment happens:

kubectl get pvc

now shows:

NAME        STATUS    VOLUME         CAPACITY   ACCESS MODES   STORAGECLASS   AGE
app-data    Bound     pvc-1234abcd   1Gi        RWO            standard       2m

The Pod can finally mount the volume and start normally.

This is exactly what you need to know when a business-critical workload refuses to come up because “storage is broken”.

🧠 What EP3 Teaches You

By the end of Episode 3, you’ll understand:

• What PVC Pending really means in practice

• How dynamic provisioning works behind the scenes

• Why most PVC problems are configuration issues, not “Kubernetes is bad”

• How to systematically debug storage incidents:

• How a tiny mistake in storageClassName, size, or access modes can block an entire deployment

• A practical incident playbook you can reuse in real clusters

If you want to be the engineer who can fix “Kubernetes storage is broken” instead of just complaining about it — this episode is for you.

🚀 Coming Up in Episode 4

Episode 4 moves to another classic production failure:

👉 ImagePullBackOff — when Kubernetes can’t pull your container image.

We’ll recreate scenarios like:

• Wrong image tags

• Private registry without proper credentials

• Local vs remote image confusion (latest tag pitfalls)

No fluffy theory.
A real Pod stuck in ImagePullBackOff, and a full walkthrough of how to bring it back.

If you want that episode early, make sure you’re subscribed on both YouTube and the newsletter 👇

🔗 Watch the Full Simulation + Get the Code

🎥 Watch Kubernetes Simulation EP3 (PVC Stuck in Pending)
Search for:

or visit my channel:
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@learnwithdevopsengineer

📬 Get the code, manifests, and future labs:
Subscribe here:
👉 https://learnwithdevopsengineer.beehiiv.com/subscribe

Newsletter subscribers get:

• Full EP3 source code + Kubernetes manifests

• Incident checklists you can save for real on-call work

• Future simulation bundles (Services, PVCs, node failures, probes, etc.)

• Interview-style questions based on each episode

💼 Need Help with DevOps or Kubernetes?

If you’re building:

• Real-world Kubernetes clusters for your applications

• CI/CD pipelines for Docker + Kubernetes

• Monitoring & alerting around Pods, Services, and storage

• Internal “failure simulation labs” for your engineering team

You can work with me directly.
Reply to this email or message me on YouTube / Instagram.

— Arbaz
📺 YouTube: Learn with DevOps Engineer
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