Introduction
Choosing the right tool for your storage layer is one of the most consequential decisions in modern infrastructure. If your data footprint is large—or moving that data is expensive, slow, or operationally risky—it’s often better to pause and validate assumptions early. Rushed storage decisions can create outcomes that are not only costly and time-consuming, but sometimes genuinely hard to reverse. On the other hand, if you have multiple migration paths, you’ve assessed risks realistically, and you have rollback options if one approach fails, then a structured comparison can help you make a more informed decision. The most important principle is simple: do not decide based on feature lists alone. Decide based on your workload, your failure model, and your operational constraints—and confirm with a PoC.
Criteria of This Article
This article focuses on MinIO alternatives that are open source, deployable on-premise, and credible in real-world scenarios rather than just demos or marketing narratives. The options covered are SeaweedFS, Garage, RustFS, and Ceph Object Gateway (RGW) deployed on Kubernetes via Rook.
Option One: SeaweedFS
SeaweedFS is a distributed storage system designed to handle both small and large files, and it is often framed closer to a distributed filesystem plus object gateway approach than a pure “S3-first” product. At a high level, it combines a volume/blob layer with additional services (such as filer and gateways) to support multiple access methods, including S3 and file-oriented interfaces. In practice, SeaweedFS can be a strong fit when your workload is file-heavy or multi-access-pattern and you want architectural flexibility. It is commonly discussed as valuable for very large datasets and for workloads where colder data dominates, such as archives, backups, or large media libraries with low access frequency. The trade-off is that operational complexity can be higher than MinIO depending on how you deploy it, because the system is modular and many workflows are CLI and configuration driven rather than UI-driven. UI maturity is generally weaker than MinIO Console, so if your team prefers UI-first day-2 operations, you should plan for that gap. Authentication and IAM-like expectations are an area where the safest stance is to assume you must validate the exact auth flow you need in your environment, including the behavior of access keys and any OIDC-style integration you intend to rely on. For durability, SeaweedFS is often framed as replication-oriented for hot data, with erasure coding as a strategy you can apply for warm or cold tiers, but that typically requires deliberate lifecycle and tiering design rather than a simple toggle. Performance is also highly workload-dependent; community reports vary, so the only reliable conclusion is to benchmark your own workload with your object sizes, concurrency profile, metadata intensity, and failure scenarios. Overall, SeaweedFS can shine in file-heavy contexts and large-scale datasets, but you should expect less polished UI and more operational design effort than MinIO.
Option Two: Garage
Garage is a lightweight Rust-based object storage system designed with reliability and geo-distributed replication as a core focus. It frequently comes up in self-hosted discussions because it aims to be self-contained and resilient across multiple zones or sites, often on relatively modest hardware, with replication serving as the primary resilience model. The most important constraint to internalize is S3 feature completeness: Garage is unusually explicit about which parts of the S3 API it supports and which are incomplete, which is great for transparency, but it also means you should plan for the possibility that a workflow depending on advanced S3 capabilities may not work as-is. If your environment depends on specific tooling and S3 edge behaviors—such as backup tooling with strict API requirements, lifecycle policies, versioning nuances, or policy/ACL expectations—Garage should be treated as “PoC required” rather than “assume it will be compatible.” In IAM/OIDC terms, Garage is not generally positioned as an integrated IAM/OIDC console-first experience, so if you need external identity integration you will often end up building it around Garage via proxies or gateways. The same minimalism applies to UI expectations; Garage is commonly operated CLI-first, which some teams prefer, but UI-driven operations teams should plan for that operational style. Performance insights are mostly community-driven rather than benchmark-driven, and one repeatedly practical lesson is that metadata performance matters disproportionately; if metadata lands on low-IOPS storage, behavior can degrade in unpleasant ways, while placing metadata on SSD/high-IOPS storage can significantly improve stability and throughput. In summary, Garage can be a strong fit for multi-site and geo-distributed deployments when you value resilience and operational simplicity, but it demands careful validation of S3 completeness and disciplined storage choices for metadata.
*Option Three: RustFS RustFS *
is an open-source, S3-compatible distributed object storage system written in Rust, positioning itself around performance, simplicity, and security. It has attracted significant attention, but like any newer entrant, it should be evaluated with a production mindset that includes a real PoC, monitoring, and an explicit rollback plan. In its own documentation, RustFS presents a high-level architectural framing that distinguishes centralized-metadata and decentralized-metadata approaches and positions itself as decentralized and scalable, often alongside MinIO in that category. RustFS uses the Apache-2.0 license, which can be lower-friction for many organizations compared to copyleft licenses, particularly when internal distribution, embedding, or modifications are considerations. Operationally, one practical advantage RustFS claims over more minimal systems is a management console/dashboard, which can matter a lot for day-2 operations if your team expects visibility and routine actions through a UI. Performance is where RustFS messaging can be attractive, but it must be handled responsibly: project-published throughput figures should be treated as project-reported benchmark claims tied to specific test conditions, not as guaranteed outcomes. The only correct approach is to benchmark your own workload with realistic object distributions, concurrency, network conditions, and actual storage media (NVMe versus HDD, and the real IOPS budget). The overall picture is that RustFS may be appealing if you want an Apache-2.0, performance-oriented S3 store with a stronger UI story than minimal alternatives, but it requires more PoC discipline and version-specific validation to avoid surprises.
*Option Four: Ceph RGW on Kubernetes via Rook Ceph Object Gateway (RGW)
*
is the object storage interface for Ceph, providing an S3-compatible REST API backed by Ceph’s storage cluster. When deployed on Kubernetes via Rook, RGW becomes especially compelling if you already operate Ceph or want a unified storage platform covering block, file, and object under one umbrella. RGW tends to be viewed as “enterprise-like” not because it is simple, but because it sits in a mature and widely deployed ecosystem with deep durability and operational concepts. That maturity comes with real trade-offs: compared to single-purpose object stores, Ceph is heavier operationally, has more moving parts, and benefits strongly from solid monitoring, capacity planning, and failure drills. Rook helps by providing Kubernetes-native deployment patterns and CRDs for Ceph components, including object stores and related workflows. If your team can afford the operational footprint, RGW is often the choice that maximizes ecosystem depth and long-term flexibility, especially when object storage is not an isolated component but part of a broader storage strategy.
**What to Validate in a Real PoC
A credible decision requires a measurable PoC. Define your workload concretely by testing realistic object sizes and access patterns, not just a single synthetic benchmark. At minimum, validate small-object behavior, medium objects, and large objects, because metadata and multipart behavior can dominate real performance. Test read-heavy, write-heavy, and mixed workloads, and include metadata-heavy operations such as listing and delete patterns if your applications do them. Run concurrency levels that reflect production clients, and treat latency sensitivity as a first-class requirement if your applications have tight timeouts or synchronous request patterns. Compatibility must be tested against your actual toolchain and “non-negotiable” S3 expectations, including backup tools, lifecycle rules, versioning, replication requirements, encryption expectations, and multipart uploads. Just as importantly, run failure and recovery drills: take nodes down, simulate zone loss, introduce network instability, and observe behavior while the system is rebalancing or recovering, because many systems look fine until recovery pressure reveals weak points. Finally, validate day-2 operations explicitly, including provisioning, secret and key rotation, observability (metrics/logs/alerts), upgrade procedures, and time-to-recover targets under realistic failure events.
Top comments (0)