# Delete an Aerospike cluster on Kubernetes

## Overview

You can delete your Aerospike cluster running on Kubernetes by deleting its Custom Resource (CR) file.

Deleting a cluster causes a complete shutdown of all pods (nodes) in the cluster, which may not be recoverable. When a cluster is deleted, all resources created by AKO for that cluster are permanently lost.

Whether data in a Persistent Volume Control (PVC) is deleted or retained depends on the `cascadeDelete` flag set in the CR. Data persistence also depends on the underlying `storageClass`, which is set by the Kubernetes administrator and is not part of AKO.

::: caution
If you delete the Kubernetes cluster instead of the Aerospike cluster using a cloud provider like AWS, delete persistent storage volumes as a separate step.

Persistent storage volumes are not automatically deleted when you delete the Kubernetes cluster. This protects your persistent storage data, but your cloud provider will continue to charge you for these storage volumes.
:::

## Process

Run `kubectl delete` on the Custom Resource (CR) file to delete the cluster:

Terminal window

```shell
kubectl delete -f aerospike-cluster.yaml
```

If you are using a local deployment like Minikube, you can also delete the cluster with `minikube delete`.