Retain PVCs on PostgresCluster delete

[nbrns]

Overview

When deleting a PostgresCluster CRD, the operator also deletes it's PVCs. I'd love to see a configuration option on the operator/cluster CRD that allows us to retain the PVC and the attached PV.

I know there is a guide to retain the PVs by doing some manual patching. However, it is cumbersome to reattach the PVs to a new Cluster, especially in a fully automated scenario. Newly provisioned persistent volumes claim do not work well with label selectors (e.g. dynamic provisioning with selector labels is not supported on AKS and EKS).

Use Case

• Easier recovery by mounting existing PVCs to StatefulSet deployed by the operator instead of having to reattach PVs to PVCs
• Many operators keep the PVCs by default, i.e. they do not prune the data upon CRD deletion. This is more intuitive in my opinion

Desired Behavior

A configuration option on either the operator or the PostgresCluster CRD, that allows to retain PVCs on PostgresCluster deletion. E.g. retainPvcs: true

Environment

Tell us about your environment:

Please provide the following details:

• Platform: AKS
• Platform Version: 1.26.3
• PGO Image Tag: (e.g. ubi8-5.3.1-0)
• Postgres Version (e.g. 15)
• Storage: (e.g. hostpath, nfs, or the name of your storage class)
• Number of Postgres clusters: 2

Additional Information

NA

[tjmoore4]

Hello @nbrns. Thank you for your use-case information. I've added a note about this feature request to our backlog for future development. Regarding your specific scenario, do I understand correctly that you always keep all associated PVCs or do you only need to retain a subset of them?

[nbrns]

Thanks for noting our use case!

I would like to keep all PVCs associated to a Postgres Cluster and its respective StatefulSets

[tjmoore4]

Understood, thanks! I've updated our backlog accordingly.

[szelenka]

This would be a very welcome addition, similar to #3654