Amazon S3
Scalable object storage service for unlimited data storage and retrieval with high durability and availability
SeaweedFS
Scalable distributed file system with fast O(1) object access
SeaweedFS delivers a simple, highly scalable distributed storage solution that handles billions of files with O(1) reads, low metadata overhead, and built‑in S3, Filer, and cloud‑tiering capabilities.
Overview
Highlights
O(1) single-disk reads with only 40 bytes metadata per file
Flexible replication and erasure-coding for cost-effective durability
Transparent tiered storage and cloud integration
Filer layer offering POSIX-like directories, S3, WebDAV, and CSI driver
Pros
- Extremely low metadata overhead enables fast lookups
- Linear scalability – add any server with disk space
- Multiple access APIs (S3, Hadoop, WebDAV, FUSE)
- Built-in tiered storage reduces cloud costs
Considerations
- Operational complexity when configuring erasure coding and tiering
- Community support may be smaller than mature commercial solutions
- Limited GUI tools; management primarily via CLI/API
- Performance can vary with network latency in multi-region deployments
Managed products teams compare with
When teams consider SeaweedFS, these hosted platforms usually appear on the same shortlist.
Looking for a hosted option? These are the services engineering teams benchmark against before choosing open source.
Fit guide
Great for
- Enterprises needing petabyte-scale object storage with fast random reads
- Developers building data-intensive applications that require S3 compatibility
- Organizations looking to combine on-premise hot storage with cloud warm tier
- Kubernetes workloads that need a CSI-compatible persistent volume
Not ideal when
- Use cases demanding built-in advanced analytics or query engine
- Small teams preferring fully managed SaaS storage
- Environments where zero-maintenance is required without in-house ops
- Workloads that rely heavily on block-level storage semantics
How teams use it
Media asset management for streaming platform
Store billions of video files with instant O(1) retrieval, while automatically tiering older content to cheap cloud storage.
Backup and archival for enterprise databases
Offload large backup files to SeaweedFS, leveraging erasure coding for durability and seamless S3 API for integration with existing backup tools.
Kubernetes persistent storage for AI training
Provide fast, scalable volumes via the CSI driver, enabling large dataset access across training pods.
Large-scale log aggregation
Ingest high-volume log files, use TTL expiration to auto-purge, and query via Hadoop compatible FS.
Tech snapshot
Go85%
templ5%
Java4%
Shell2%
Makefile2%
Rust1%
Frequently asked questions
How does SeaweedFS achieve O(1) reads?
Metadata is stored on the volume servers, not a central master, so locating a file requires a single lookup that maps directly to a disk offset, typically a single disk read.
Can SeaweedFS replace traditional object stores like MinIO?
SeaweedFS provides a compatible S3 API and many similar features, but it differs in architecture and may require more operational handling; suitability depends on workload and expertise.
What replication options are available?
You can configure no replication, simple replication with a configurable factor, rack-aware replication, or erasure coding for warm storage, each balancing cost and availability.
Is there a managed cloud offering?
SeaweedFS is an open-source project; there is no official managed service, though community members and third‑party vendors provide hosted options.
How does tiered storage work?
Data can be written to local disks (hot tier) and automatically migrated to configured cloud buckets (warm tier) based on policies, keeping hot data fast and warm data inexpensive.
Project at a glance
Active- Stars
- 29,682
- Watchers
- 29,682
- Forks
- 2,678
LicenseApache-2.0
Repo age11 years old
Last commit17 hours ago
Self-hostingSupported
Primary languageGo
Last synced 4 hours ago