Volume only for init containers

An init container prepares data for the "regular" container. It needs quite a lot of scratch space to download/preprocess the data, space that is no longer needed after the init container finishes.

Currently the volumes mounted for the pod have enough space for the init process, and the space is not used for most of the pod's lifetime. Is there a way to have a Volume that exists only for the lifetime of the init container, and is destroyed after it's done? The pod (i.e. main container) is long-lived (days) and the init container and its scratch space are short lives (minutes).

A volume is tied to a Pod, not to a particular container. If you've configured a volume in your Pod it will exist for the lifetime of the Pod.

Maybe you can investigate one of these options?

1. Use object storage instead (S3-alike storage), because that doesn't get "mounted" on the filesystem and can have a lifecycle separate from that of your Pod.

   Whether or not this is an option depends both on the availability of an object storage service as well as the particular tools/applications you're using.

2. Perform your initialization in a separate, ephemeral Pod -- aka a Job. Include logic in your application Pod that blocks until the initialization is complete.

   Tools like Helm and ArgoCD have the ability to automatically submit a Job when you update your deployment.