Enable Multi-Site Server-Side Bucket Replication

The procedure on this page configures automatic server-side bucket replication between multiple MinIO deployments. Multi-Site Active-Active replication builds on the Enable Two-Way Server-Side Bucket Replication procedure with additional considerations required to ensure predictable replication behavior across all sites.

Active-Active Replication synchronizes data between multiple remote deployments.

To configure replication between arbitrary S3-compatible services, use mc mirror.
To configure one-way “active-active” replication between two MinIO deployments, see Enable Two-Way Server-Side Bucket Replication.
To configure one-way “active-passive” replication between MinIO deployments, see Enable One-Way Server-Side Bucket Replication.

Multi-Site Active-Active replication configurations can span multiple racks, datacenters, or geographic locations. Complexity of configuring and maintaining multi-site configurations generally increase with the number of sites and size of each site. Enterprises looking to implement multi-site replication should consider leveraging MinIO SUBNET support to access the expertise, planning, and engineering resources required for addressing that use case.

Requirements

You must meet all of the basic requirements for bucket replication described in Bucket Replication Requirements.

In addition, to create multi-site bucket replication set up, you must meet the following additional requirements:

Access to All Clusters

You must have network access and log in credentials with correct permissions to all deployments to set up multi-site active-active bucket replication.

You can access the deployments by installing mc and using the command line. Use the mc alias set command to create an alias for each MinIO deployment.

Alias creation requires specifying an access key for a user on the deployment. This user must have permission to create and manage users and policies on the deployment.

Specifically, ensure the user has at minimum:

Considerations

Click to expand any of the following:

Procedure

This procedure requires repeating steps for each MinIO deployment participating in the multi-site replication configuration. Depending on the number of deployments, this procedure may require significant time and care in implementation. MinIO recommends reading through the procedure before attempting to implement the documented steps.

Configure Multi-Site Bucket Replication Using the Command Line
- Create New Bucket Replication Rules
- Validate the Replication Configuration

Configure Multi-Site Bucket Replication Using the Command Line `mc`

This procedure uses the placeholder ALIAS to reference the alias each MinIO deployment being configured for replication. Replace these values with the appropriate alias for each MinIO deployment.

This procedure assumes each alias corresponds to a user with the necessary replication permissions.

Changed in version RELEASE.2022-12-24T15-21-38Z: mc replicate add automatically creates the necessary replication targets, removing the need for using the deprecated mc admin remote bucket add command. This procedure only documents the procedure as of that release.

1) Create New Bucket Replication Rules

Use the mc replicate add command to add a new replication rule to each MinIO deployment.

mc replicate add ALIAS/BUCKET \
   --remote-bucket 'https://USER:PASSWORD@HOSTNAME:PORT/BUCKET' \
   --replicate "delete,delete-marker,existing-objects"

Replace ALIAS with the alias of the origin MinIO deployment. The name must match the bucket specified when creating the remote target in the previous step.
Replace BUCKET with the name of the bucket to replicate from on the origin deployment.
Replace the --remote-bucket to specify the remote MinIO deployment and bucket to which the ALIAS/BUCKET replicates.

The USER:PASSWORD must correspond to a user on the remote deployment with the necessary replication permissions.

The HOSTNAME:PORT must resolve to a reachable MinIO instance on the remote deployment. The BUCKET must exist and otherwise meet all other replication requirements.
The --replicate "delete,delete-marker,existing-objects" flag enables the following replication features:
- Replication of Deletes
- Replication of existing Objects
See mc replicate add --replicate for more complete documentation. Omit any field to disable replication of that component.

Specify any other supported optional arguments for mc replicate add.

Repeat these commands for each remote MinIO deployment participating in the multi-site replication configuration. For example, a multi-site replication configuration consisting of MinIO deployments minio1, minio2, and minio3 would require repeating this step on each deployment for each remote.

Specifically, in this scenario, perform this step twice on each deployment:

On the minio1 deployment, once for a rule for minio2 and again for a separate rule for minio3.
On the minio2 deployment, once for a rule for minio1 and again for a separate rule for minio3.
On the minio3 deployment, once for a rule for minio1 and again for a separate rule for minio2.

2) Validate the Replication Configuration

Use mc cp to copy a new object to the replicated bucket on one of the deployments.

mc cp ~/foo.txt ALIAS/BUCKET

Use mc ls to verify the object exists on the destination bucket:

mc ls ALIAS/BUCKET

Repeat this test on each deployment by copying a new unique file and checking that the file replicates to each of the other deployments.

You can also use mc stat to check the file to check the current replication stage of the object.