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I am curious why people use Minio over S3/B2/R2/GCS. It seems like the hard part is not really the api of a key value store like this, but the reliability. S3 i

I am curious why people use Minio over S3/B2/R2/GCS. It seems like the hard part is not really the api of a key value store like this, but the reliability. S3 is so cheap (and I assume its competitors are even cheaper), it seems like giving up that reliability and running your own infra would be a really tough sell. (For testing, I totally understand having something that matches the s3 api but is lighter weight)

evilduck 5y ago
I know this is a smaller and uncommon use case but in a previous job I used minio so that we could have a single storage implementation for an application that was most commonly deployed to offline scenarios but when deployed to online scenarios it could seamlessly use S3 by just updating the environment values.
- habitue 5y ago
  Ah, ok I didn't realize you could use it as a wrapper around S3. That makes a lot of sense
  - evilduck 5y ago
    It doesn't wrap Amazon's S3 it just provides an S3 compatible API. Our use case was to have application code that only interacted with file storage through a single S3-api compatible filesystem adapter. Then we'd either spin up minio in a docker container in those offline deployment scenarios and feed that container's info into the applications environment variables, or when deployed to the internet we'd feed it real AWS S3 connection info. The application code then never needed to know or care where the files lived which meant that code didn't need to have conditionals to use regular filesystem libraries in one code path and S3 adapters in a different path. This also naturally prevented some of our junior devs from trying to do things that instinctually made sense when working directly with a filesystem but is impossible to do on S3 (like trying to unzip a file on S3, or symlink or think that you have cheap and easy move operations).
SCUSKU 5y ago
At my company, we've considered switching to MinIO from S3 because it would allow us to host data on prem and potentially have higher upload speeds than S3 (although we haven't tested that). To your original point though, unless you have a compelling reason to not want to upload your data to servers you don't control, I agree that your best bet is just to use a cloud storage solution.
- habitue 5y ago
  Good points, this makes a lot of sense. I have been doing cloud stuff so long I forgot many companies are leery of it (some justifiably, some not, but as a developer you have to work with the constraints)
TrueDuality 5y ago
MinIO can be backed by S3. I think the largest compelling point more for all in one solutions that want to support on-premise data storage in addition various cloud storages. I think I've only interacted with it directly through thanos/prometheus though...
e12e 5y ago
> S3 is so cheap Only if you're not accessing the data (outside aws)? S3 storage is cheap, but outgoing bandwidth is expensive?
- roboyoshi 5y ago
  Yeah, I don't understand that either, people pushing S3.. is everyone on AWS here? If you are using VPS Hosters or Bare Metal machines and connect that to S3, it's not just expensive, but also slow. While your own minio cluster is cheaper and faster. Within AWS I totally get that S3 is a no-brainer.
antman 5y ago
Because it adds a compatibility layer between your application and cloud services (plus local) by providing a common S3 API. e.g. https://docs.min.io/docs/minio-gateway-for-azure.html https://docs.min.io/docs/minio-gateway-for-azure.html

evilduck 5y ago

I know this is a smaller and uncommon use case but in a previous job I used minio so that we could have a single storage implementation for an application that was most commonly deployed to offline scenarios but when deployed to online scenarios it could seamlessly use S3 by just updating the environment values.

habitue 5y ago
Ah, ok I didn't realize you could use it as a wrapper around S3. That makes a lot of sense
- evilduck 5y ago
  It doesn't wrap Amazon's S3 it just provides an S3 compatible API. Our use case was to have application code that only interacted with file storage through a single S3-api compatible filesystem adapter. Then we'd either spin up minio in a docker container in those offline deployment scenarios and feed that container's info into the applications environment variables, or when deployed to the internet we'd feed it real AWS S3 connection info. The application code then never needed to know or care where the files lived which meant that code didn't need to have conditionals to use regular filesystem libraries in one code path and S3 adapters in a different path. This also naturally prevented some of our junior devs from trying to do things that instinctually made sense when working directly with a filesystem but is impossible to do on S3 (like trying to unzip a file on S3, or symlink or think that you have cheap and easy move operations).

SCUSKU 5y ago

At my company, we've considered switching to MinIO from S3 because it would allow us to host data on prem and potentially have higher upload speeds than S3 (although we haven't tested that). To your original point though, unless you have a compelling reason to not want to upload your data to servers you don't control, I agree that your best bet is just to use a cloud storage solution.

habitue 5y ago
Good points, this makes a lot of sense. I have been doing cloud stuff so long I forgot many companies are leery of it (some justifiably, some not, but as a developer you have to work with the constraints)

TrueDuality 5y ago

MinIO can be backed by S3. I think the largest compelling point more for all in one solutions that want to support on-premise data storage in addition various cloud storages. I think I've only interacted with it directly through thanos/prometheus though...

e12e 5y ago

> S3 is so cheap Only if you're not accessing the data (outside aws)? S3 storage is cheap, but outgoing bandwidth is expensive?

roboyoshi 5y ago
Yeah, I don't understand that either, people pushing S3.. is everyone on AWS here? If you are using VPS Hosters or Bare Metal machines and connect that to S3, it's not just expensive, but also slow. While your own minio cluster is cheaper and faster. Within AWS I totally get that S3 is a no-brainer.

antman 5y ago

Because it adds a compatibility layer between your application and cloud services (plus local) by providing a common S3 API. e.g. https://docs.min.io/docs/minio-gateway-for-azure.html https://docs.min.io/docs/minio-gateway-for-azure.html