Kubernetes Storage Provisioning Architecture

In Kubernetes environments, storage can be provisioned in two ways. Static provisioning means an administrator creates storage resources like SMB or NFS shares ahead of time and manually manages them. Dynamic provisioning uses a StorageClass to automatically create storage when applications need it, with a provisioner handling the actual storage creation. Applications request storage through PersistentVolumeClaims (PVC), which ask for a specific amount of storage with certain access permissions, and Kubernetes matches these claims to available PersistentVolumes (PV).