Managed Kubernetes disks

Last update: May 27 2025

Managed Kubernetes disks

Managed Kubernetes uses the local and network disks of the cloud platform.

You can use local and network disks in a Managed Kubernetes cluster as a boot disk and for data storage.

When selecting a disk, consider the specifics of using local and network disks in Kubernetes.

Using network and local disks in Kubernetes⁠

	Local disks	Network disks
Advantages	Low latency of data access	Ability to store persistent data that needs to be saved when restarting and migrating pods
Limitations	No data accessibility between pods	There is an additional network latency for data access
Objects in Kubernetes	Volume and VolumeMounts, PersistentVolumes and PersistentVolumeClaims (when installing the CSI driver yourself)	PersistentVolumes and PersistentVolumeClaims
Utilization	Boot disk Data storage	Boot disk Data storage

Boot disks⁠

Boot (system) disks are used to start and initialize the operating system and applications in Kubernetes containers.

You can use local or network disks from the cloud platform as boot disks. In some fixed configurations with GPUs, only the local disk is available. You can select the disk size for the network disk, and the size is fixed for the local disk.

You select the boot disk when you create the cluster and cannot change it after the cluster is created.

When reinstalling node, all data on boot disks is deleted.

The nodes are being reinstalled:

• when updating the minor version of the cluster;
• to reinstall node manually;
• auto-updating patch versions;
• node auto-recovery.

Storage disks⁠

We recommend using PersistentVolume (PV) on network disks to store data in Managed Kubernetes clusters.

If you installed the CSI driver yourself and created a PV on the local disk, the data will be deleted when you delete the node.