MinIO

High-performance S3-compatible object storage for AI and analytics

MinIO delivers blazing-fast, S3-compatible object storage optimized for AI/ML, analytics, and data-intensive workloads at scale.

Overview

Purpose-Built for Modern Data Workloads

MinIO is a high-performance object storage system designed to handle the demanding requirements of AI/ML pipelines, analytics platforms, and large-scale data infrastructure. With full S3 API compatibility, it integrates seamlessly into existing cloud-native architectures while delivering industry-leading throughput and low latency.

Deployment Flexibility

Built in Go, MinIO runs on bare metal, Kubernetes, and multi-cloud environments. Teams can compile from source for custom deployments or use pre-built binaries. The embedded MinIO Console provides intuitive web-based management, while the mc command-line client offers powerful automation capabilities. Erasure coding ensures data durability without sacrificing performance.

Licensing and Support

Released under GNU AGPLv3, MinIO serves the open-source community with best-effort support through GitHub and Slack. Organizations requiring commercial licensing, production SLAs, or proprietary usage should explore MinIO AIStor for enterprise-grade support and compliance.

Highlights

Full S3 API compatibility for drop-in replacement of Amazon S3

Optimized for AI/ML and analytics with high-throughput architecture

Multi-cloud and Kubernetes-native deployment support

Erasure coding for data durability and fault tolerance

Pros

Industry-leading performance for data-intensive workloads
Seamless integration with existing S3 tooling and SDKs
Cloud-agnostic architecture supports bare metal and Kubernetes
Active community with 55,000+ GitHub stars

Considerations

AGPLv3 license requires source disclosure for modified versions
No scheduled release cadence or guaranteed timelines
Production use of source builds carries no warranty
Commercial/proprietary usage requires separate licensing

Managed products teams compare with

When teams consider MinIO, these hosted platforms usually appear on the same shortlist.

Amazon S3

Scalable object storage service for unlimited data storage and retrieval with high durability and availability

Azure Blob Storage

Massively scalable cloud object storage service for unstructured data (images, videos, backups) with high durability

Google Cloud Storage

Scalable object storage for unstructured data

Looking for a hosted option? These are the services engineering teams benchmark against before choosing open source.

Fit guide

Great for

AI/ML teams needing fast object storage for training datasets
Analytics platforms processing large-scale data pipelines
Organizations seeking S3-compatible on-premises storage
Cloud-native applications requiring multi-cloud portability

Not ideal when

Teams unable to comply with AGPLv3 copyleft obligations
Projects requiring guaranteed release schedules
Organizations needing vendor-backed production SLAs without commercial licensing
Use cases demanding traditional filesystem semantics

How teams use it

AI Model Training Pipeline

Store and serve petabytes of training data with low-latency access for distributed ML frameworks

Data Lake Infrastructure

Build S3-compatible data lakes on-premises or across multiple clouds for analytics workloads

Backup and Archival

Replace expensive cloud storage with high-performance object storage for backup repositories

Media Asset Management

Serve high-resolution video and image assets with erasure-coded durability and fast retrieval

Tech snapshot

Go99%

Shell1%

Makefile1%

Mustache1%

Smarty1%

Dockerfile1%

Frequently asked questions

Is MinIO compatible with existing S3 applications?

Yes, MinIO implements the S3 API, allowing seamless integration with S3-compatible tools, SDKs, and applications without code changes.

What does the AGPLv3 license mean for my project?

AGPLv3 requires you to release source code of modified versions and applications that interact with MinIO over a network. Commercial licensing is available through MinIO AIStor for proprietary use.

Can I run MinIO in production?

Yes, but source-built deployments carry no warranty. For production SLAs and enterprise support, consider MinIO AIStor commercial licensing.

How does MinIO ensure data durability?

MinIO uses erasure coding to protect data against hardware failures while maintaining high performance and storage efficiency.

What are the minimum requirements to build from source?

You need Go 1.24 or later. Use `go install github.com/minio/minio@latest` to compile and install the latest version.

Project at a glance

Active

View repo

Stars: 59,846
Watchers: 59,846
Forks: 6,903

LicenseAGPL-3.0

Repo age11 years old

Last commit2 weeks ago

Self-hostingSupported

Primary languageGo

Last synced 3 hours ago