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MinIO — How It Works

Erasure coding, distributed object placement, and S3-native architecture.

Architecture Overview

flowchart TB
    subgraph MinIO_C["MinIO Cluster"]
        subgraph ES["Erasure Set (4+4 example)"]
            D1["Drive 1\n(data)"]
            D2["Drive 2\n(data)"]
            D3["Drive 3\n(data)"]
            D4["Drive 4\n(data)"]
            P1["Drive 5\n(parity)"]
            P2["Drive 6\n(parity)"]
            P3["Drive 7\n(parity)"]
            P4["Drive 8\n(parity)"]
        end
    end

    Client_M["S3 Client"] -->|"PUT object"| MinIO_C

    Note over ES: With 4 parity drives,<br/>survives loss of any 4 drives

    style ES fill:#c62828,color:#fff

Write Path

sequenceDiagram
    participant Client_MW as S3 Client
    participant MinIO_H as MinIO Node
    participant EC as Erasure Coder
    participant Drives as Local Drives (NVMe/SSD)

    Client_MW->>MinIO_H: PUT /bucket/object (multipart)
    MinIO_H->>EC: Split into data + parity shards
    EC->>Drives: Write shards across drives
    Drives-->>MinIO_H: All shards written
    MinIO_H-->>Client_MW: 200 OK (ETag)

⚠️ OSS Archive Notice

The MinIO open-source repository was archived February 13, 2026. MinIO Inc. now develops the commercial AIStor product. For open-source S3 storage, consider Ceph RGW, SeaweedFS, or Garage.

Sources