Alternatives to MinIO?

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Hi folks,
Given MinIO Community Edition Enters Maintenance-Only, it’s time to evaluate our options.

I’d like to use Garage, but as discussed elsewhere, it doesn’t support versioning (yet).

Anyone has first-hand experience with any of following?

Other options to consider?

Best regards.

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Hi Maclm,

Kevin here from the RustFS technical team. Thanks for considering RustFS as one of your options!

You’re spot on—the changes to MinIO and the shift to maintenance-only for the Community Edition have understandably caused a lot of concern worldwide. Global security teams have been continuously auditing MinIO, and there are currently 6 new CVEs (including 2 peripheral ones) that haven’t received timely patches. That’s a massive security risk for users right now.

Garage and the other products you listed are all excellent projects. However, having looked deeply into this space, here are my honest recommendations:

  1. Hold off for now: I honestly don’t recommend fully migrating to any of the alternatives (RustFS, Garage, Apache Ozone, OpenIO SDS, etc.) right this second. It’s best to wait about six months before making a final decision.
  2. The best immediate fix: Your optimal move right now is likely to upgrade to the community-maintained MinIO fork (https://github.com/pgsty/minio).

Here is the breakdown of why I suggest this:

  • RustFS: As much as I’d love to pitch my own project, we are currently in the Alpha stage. Unless you’re a hardcore tinkerer with the bandwidth to maintain Alpha-stage software, I don’t recommend deploying RustFS in large-scale production just yet. Wait for our Beta or RC releases for commercial use.
  • Garage vs. RustFS: Garage has some amazing strengths. However, as both products mature, RustFS aims to edge it out on peripheral metrics: business-friendly licensing, seamless MinIO consistency (true drop-in replacement), rapid bug fixes, transparent security advisories, and overall development velocity.
  • Apache Ozone: Because it’s Java-based, long-term performance is a concern. It largely lost the competitive race against MinIO, community activity is relatively low, and with closed issue and bug discussions, it’s hard to get official support or responses.
  • OpenIO SDS: Ever since it was acquired by OVHcloud, the open-source community momentum and evolution speed have noticeably slowed down, which makes relying on it for the future a bit worrying.
  • SeaweedFS: It lacks the 1-click MinIO migration feature (which RustFS provides). If you choose SeaweedFS, the migration, management, and integration costs are high—you’d likely need 3 to 6+ months just for testing and adaptation.

We are fully committed to keeping our core features permanently open-source. I hope that when the time is right and the software is ready, you’ll give RustFS a try in your test environment.

Best,
Kevin

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Hi @Kevin_Lee

Thanks for sharing such insight. Quite valuable.
I followed your recommendation and gave pgsty/minio a shot.
I’m happy to report it was seamless!

  • Stop container
  • Updated quadlet with Image=docker.io/pgsty/minio:latest
  • Pulled the image
  • Start container and voilà!

As a bonus, I got back the webUI admin console!

Where to look if I want to follow RustFS progress?

Cheers!
m

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Hi m,

Glad to hear the pgsty/minio recommendation worked seamlessly for you! Getting the WebUI admin console back is definitely a nice bonus. Just a quick heads-up though: while this version is a great stopgap and perfectly usable right now, it might lack long-term maintenance in the future, so just keep an eye on it.

As for RustFS, the best way to follow our progress is through our GitHub repo and our X account. We are currently pushing hard and targeting our GA release for sometime around July or August.

When we do hit GA, if you plan to give RustFS a try, my honest advice is to deploy it in a test or staging environment first. Let it run for 3 to 6 months to verify stability for your specific workload before pointing any production data at it. Storage is foundational, so it’s always better to play it safe!

Whenever you do decide to give it a spin, feel free to reach out or tag me directly with any questions or issues. Always happy to help.

Cheers,

Kevin

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