Install and Deploy MinIO

MinIO is a software-defined high performance distributed object storage server. You can run MinIO on consumer or enterprise-grade hardware and a variety of operating systems and architectures.

All MinIO deployments implement Erasure Coding backends. You can deploy MinIO using one of the following topologies:

Single-Node Single-Drive (SNSD or “Standalone”)

Local development and evaluation with no/limited reliability

Single-Node Multi-Drive (SNMD or “Standalone Multi-Drive”)

Workloads with lower performance, scale, and capacity requirements

Drive-level reliability with configurable tolerance for loss of up to 1/2 all drives

Evaluation of multi-drive topologies and failover behavior.

Multi-Node Multi-Drive (MNMD or “Distributed”)

Enterprise-grade high-performance object storage

Multi Node/Drive level reliability with configurable tolerance for loss of up to 1/2 all nodes/drives

Primary storage for AI/ML, Distributed Query, Analytics, and other Data Lake components

Scalable for Petabyte+ workloads - both storage capacity and performance

Note

Use MacOS-based MinIO deployments for early development and evaluation. MinIO provides no guarantee of support for SNMD or MNMD topologies on MacOS.

MinIO strongly recommends Linux (RHEL, Ubuntu) or Kubernetes (Upstream, OpenShift) for long-term development and production environments.

Site Replication

Site replication expands the features of bucket replication to include IAM, security tokens, access keys, and bucket features the same across all sites.

Site replication links multiple MinIO deployments together and keeps the buckets, objects, and Identity and Access Management (IAM) settings in sync across all connected sites.

Each MinIO deployment (“peer site”) synchronizes the following changes across the other peer sites:

Creation, modification, and deletion of buckets and objects, including
- Bucket and Object Configurations
- Policies
- mc tag set
- Locks, including retention and legal hold configurations
- Encryption settings
Creation and deletion of IAM users, groups, policies, and policy mappings to users or groups (for LDAP users or groups)
Creation of Security Token Service (STS) credentials for session tokens verifiable from the local root credentials
Creation and deletion of access keys (except those owned by the root user)

Site replication enables bucket versioning for all new and existing buckets on all replicated sites.

New in version mc: RELEASE.2023-12-02T02-03-28Z

You can choose to replicate ILM expiration rules across peer sites. For new site replication configurations, use the mc admin replicate add with the --replicate-ilm-expiry flag. For existing site replication configurations, you can enable or disable the behavior using mc admin replicate update with either the --enable-ilm-expiry-replication or --disable-ilm-expiry-replication flag, as appropriate.

MinIO does not recommend using MacOS hosts for site replication outside of early development, evaluation, or general experimentation. For production, use Linux or Kubernetes.

What Does Not Replicate?

Not everything replicates across sites.

MinIO deployments in a site replication configuration do not replicate the creation or modification of the following items:

Platform Support

MinIO recommends non-EOL macOS versions (10.14+).

For unlisted platforms or architectures, please reach out to MinIO at hello@min.io for additional support and guidance. You can build MinIO from source and cross-compile for your platform and architecture combo. MinIO generally does not recommend source-based installations in production environments.