Upgrade a MinIO Deployment

Important

For deployments older than RELEASE.2024-03-30T09-41-56Z running with AD/LDAP enabled, you must read through the release notes for RELEASE.2024-04-18T19-09-19Z before starting this procedure. You must take the extra steps documented in the linked release as part of the upgrade.

MinIO uses an update-then-restart methodology for upgrading a deployment to a newer release:

Update the MinIO binary with the newer release.
Restart the deployment using mc admin service restart.

This procedure does not require taking downtime and is non-disruptive to ongoing operations.

This page documents methods for upgrading using the update-then-restart method for both systemctl and user-managed MinIO deployments. Deployments using Ansible, Terraform, or other management tools can use the procedures here as guidance for implementation within the existing automation framework.

Prerequisites

Back Up Cluster Settings First

Use the mc admin cluster bucket export and mc admin cluster iam export commands to take a snapshot of the bucket metadata and IAM configurations prior to starting decommissioning. You can use these snapshots to restore bucket and IAM settings to recover from user or process errors as necessary.

Check Release Notes

MinIO publishes Release Notes for your reference as part of identifying the changes applied in each release. Review the associated release notes between your current MinIO version and the newer release so you have a complete view of any changes.

Pay particular attention to any releases that are not backwards compatible. You cannot trivially downgrade from any such release.

Test Upgrades Before Applying To Production

MinIO uses a testing and validation suite as part of all releases. However, no testing suite can account for unique combinations and permutations of hardware, software, and workloads of your production environment.

You should always validate any MinIO upgrades in a lower environment (Dev/QA/Staging) before applying those upgrades to Production deployments, or any other environment containing critical data. Performing updates to production environments without first validating in lower environments is done at your own risk.

For MinIO deployments that are significantly behind latest stable (6+ months), consider using MinIO pricing for additional support and guidance during the upgrade procedure.

Considerations

Upgrades Are Non-Disruptive

MinIO’s upgrade-then-restart procedure does not require taking downtime or scheduling a maintenance period. MinIO restarts are fast, such that restarting all server processes in parallel typically completes in a few seconds. MinIO operations are atomic and strictly consistent, such that applications using MinIO or S3 SDKs can rely on the built-in transparent retry without further client-side logic. This ensures upgrades are non-disruptive to ongoing operations.

Update `systemctl`-Managed MinIO Deployments

Use these steps to upgrade a MinIO deployment where the MinIO server process is managed by systemctl, such as those created using the MinIO DEB/RPM packages.

This procedure assumes you have the MINIO_CONFIG_ENV_FILE variable set on all MinIO nodes.

Update the MinIO Binary on Each Node

The following tabs provide examples of updating MinIO onto 64-bit Linux operating systems using RPM, DEB, or binary:
RPM (RHEL)
Use the following commands to download the latest stable MinIO RPM and update the existing installation.
wget https://dl.min.io/server/minio/release/linux-amd64/archive/minio-20250408154124.0.0-1.x86_64.rpm -O minio.rpm sudo dnf update minio.rpm
DEB (Debian/Ubuntu)
Use the following commands to download the latest stable MinIO DEB and upgrade the existing installation:
wget https://dl.min.io/server/minio/release/linux-amd64/archive/minio_20250408154124.0.0_amd64.deb -O minio.deb sudo dpkg -i minio.deb
Binary
Use the following commands to download the latest stable MinIO binary and overwrite the existing binary:
wget https://dl.min.io/server/minio/release/linux-amd64/minio chmod +x minio sudo mv -f ./minio /usr/local/bin/minio
Replace /usr/local/bin with the location of the existing MinIO binary. Run which minio to identify the path if not already known.
Run minio --version on each node to validate that you successfully upgraded all binaries to the same version. Do not proceed unless all nodes use the same MinIO binary version.
Restart the Deployment

Run the mc admin service restart command to restart all MinIO server processes in the deployment simultaneously.
```
mc admin service restart ALIAS
```
Replace alias of the MinIO deployment to restart.

S3-compatible SDKs and applications should retry operations automatically, such that the restart process is typically non-disruptive to ongoing operations.
Validate the Upgrade

Use the mc admin info command to check that all MinIO servers are online, operational, and reflect the installed MinIO version.
Update MinIO Client

You should upgrade your mc binary to match or closely follow the MinIO server release. You can use the mc update command to update the binary to the latest stable release:
```
mc update
```

Update Non-System Managed MinIO Deployments

Use these steps to upgrade a MinIO deployment where the MinIO server process is managed outside of the system (systemd, systemctl), such as by a user, an automated script, or some other process management tool. This procedure only works for systems where the user running the MinIO process has write permissions for the path to the MinIO binary. For deployments managed using systemctl, see Update systemctl-Managed MinIO Deployments.

Update using `mc admin update`

The mc admin update command updates all MinIO server binaries in the target MinIO deployment before restarting all nodes simultaneously. The restart process typically completes within a few seconds and is non-disruptive to ongoing operations.

The following command updates a MinIO deployment with the specified alias to the latest stable release:

mc admin update ALIAS

The user running the mc admin update command must have write permissions to the location where the binary installs.

You can specify a URL resolving to a specific MinIO server binary version. Airgapped or internet-isolated deployments may utilize this feature for updating from an internally-accessible server:

mc admin update ALIAS https://minio-mirror.example.com/minio.sha256sum

You should upgrade your mc binary to match or closely follow the MinIO server release. You can use the mc update command to update the binary to the latest stable release:

mc update

Update by manually replacing the binary

You can download and manually replace the minio server binary on each of the host nodes in the deployment. You must then restart all nodes simultaneously, such as by using mc admin service restart.

For example, the following command downloads the latest stable MinIO binary for Linux and copies it to /usr/local/bin. The command overwrites the existing minio binary at that path.

wget https://dl.min.io/server/minio/release/linux-amd64/minio
chmod +x ./minio
sudo mv -f ./minio /usr/local/bin/minio

Once you have replaced the binary on all MinIO hosts in the deployment, you must restart all nodes simultaneously.

You should upgrade your mc binary to match or closely follow the MinIO server release. You can use the mc update command to update the binary to the latest stable release:

mc update