What methods are used to store data within the Kubernetes platform?

In Kubernetes, data within the platform is stored in several ways:

1. etcd — a distributed key-value store used by Kubernetes to store all configuration information and cluster state. It is the primary storage for metadata.

2. Persistent Volumes (PV) — an abstraction for persistent data storage that can be used by pods. PVs can be implemented on various storage types: local disks, network file systems, cloud storage.

3. ConfigMaps and Secrets — special objects for storing configuration data and sensitive information respectively, which are mounted into pods.

Thus, etcd is responsible for storing the cluster's state and configuration, while Persistent Volumes are responsible for long-term data storage of applications.