Top 10 MinIO Alternatives In 2024

‍Object storage emerges as a highly cost-effective solution for data storage within cloud infrastructure, which is pivotal in effectively managing cloud costs. While cloud-native object storage solutions such as Amazon S3 have widespread popularity, they come with their own challenges.

As an open-source alternative, MinIO seamlessly integrates with Amazon S3, offering comparable levels of performance and scalability. However, user feedback on MinIO has pointed out certain navigational challenges, including complex documentation, a cumbersome user interface, and occasional stability concerns. 

Consequently, users have begun exploring alternative options to MinIO. This blog post explores 10MinIO alternatives, each addressing common limitations and enhancing storage services to ensure exceptional performance and cost-efficiency. 

Storage is one of the most crucial aspects of cloud cost optimization, whether AWS, Azure, or GCP. A study by Virtana titled “State of Hybrid Cloud Storage in 2023” reveals a concerning trend: storage costs are on a sharp rise, outpacing overall cloud expenditure significantly.

Despite these alarming statistics, organizations often struggle with optimizing storage resources, largely due to the following factors:

• Relying solely on cloud service providers may prove inefficient. 
• Crafting customized solutions is viable but demands substantial engagement from DevOps teams and considerable time investment. 
• The imperative need for shrinkage of EBS volumes, persistent disks, or managed disks is evident, but significant cloud service providers (CSPs) currently lack a streamlined live shrinkage procedure. The existing workaround involves manual intervention, introducing a risk of errors and operational interruptions. This manual process encompasses intricate steps such as instance termination, snapshot creation, and the subsequent mounting of new volumes, which can lead to downtime.

This is why, when looking for a cloud cost management tool, you should look for 2-3 tools that: 

• Focuses on computing resources
• Works on storage resources 
• Provides visibility and reporting

In the course of our ongoing conversation regarding storage resources, let us now explore the broad array of storage options accessible within a cloud setting. 

• Object Storage: Object storage is specifically designed to handle and manage substantial amounts of unstructured data, including images, videos, and backups. Each piece of data is stored as an individual object, accompanied by its corresponding metadata.
  Example Services: Examples of object storage services include Amazon S3, Google Cloud Storage, Azure Blob Storage, and MinIO.

• Block Storage: Block storage is primarily intended for providing raw storage volumes that can be seamlessly attached to virtual machines. It proves ideal for applications that necessitate exceptionally high-performance and low-latency access to data.
  Example Services: Prominent block storage services encompass Amazon EBS, Google Cloud Persistent Disks, and Azure Managed Disks.

• File Storage: File storage offers shared file systems that can be accessed by multiple virtual machines simultaneously. This type of storage is particularly useful for applications requiring shared access to files.
  Example Services: Some well-known file storage services include Amazon EFS, and Google Cloud, Filestore, and Azure File Storage.

‍

What Is MinIO?

MinIO, an open-source object storage system, is designed to effortlessly store and retrieve unstructured data, including photos, videos, and backups. Whether deployed on-premise, in cloud environments, or in hybrid setups, it can function as a standalone object storage server or integrate into larger systems like data lakes or private clouds. With its versatility and adaptability, MinIO caters to many use cases, offering a robust storage solution for diverse needs.

MinIO has established itself as one of the leading cloud cost management tools in 2024 thanks to its impressive range of features.

1. Universal Deployment: MinIO offers a cloud-agnostic solution, enabling the deployment of S3-like infrastructure across various environments such as public clouds, private clouds, on-premise setups, and the edge. This flexibility ensures optimal performance for Kubernetes object storage, regardless of the deployment context.
2. Robust Encryption: MinIO prioritizes data security without compromising performance by providing client-side and server-side encryption. This comprehensive encryption approach ensures data integrity and authenticity while minimizing any impact on performance.
3. WORM Compliance: MinIO introduces the Write Once, Read Many (WORM) capability, which safeguards data against tampering once it is written. By disabling any API functionalities that can modify object data or metadata after writing, MinIO establishes a secure and immutable data environment.
4. Native Cloud Integration: MinIO integrates seamlessly with leading cloud infrastructures like AWS, Azure, and GCP, functioning as a native cloud application. This enables effortless integration into current cloud ecosystems, improving compatibility and accessibility.
5. Containerization Options: Besides traditional deployment methods, MinIO is highly adaptable to modern containerized environments. It can be effortlessly deployed as a containerized application on widely used platforms like Docker or Kubernetes, providing scalability and efficiency in container orchestration scenarios.

Drawbacks Of MinIO

However, despite its feature-rich set, MinIO has certain limitations that necessitate looking for MinIO alternatives. Let us look at some of them.

• The documentation process is challenging, making it difficult for the DevOps team to understand and deploy the tool efficiently.
• The initial setup phase is complex, which makes it overwhelming for newcomers.
• Since everything is in containers, visibility becomes challenging. This prevents the users from gaining comprehensive insights into the different metrics for optimization.
• Users encountered challenges while deploying the tool in Kubernetes. As a result, users face delays in deploying the tool as they encounter challenges, thereby leading to an extended timeframe for implementation.
• It requires investing in third-party applications for integrating with various tools. This dependency leads to additional expenses, increased complexity while integration, and workload disruptions. 
• Installing MinIO in an open-shift environment is challenging. This would require additional time and effort from the DevOps team to deploy MinIO, impacting project timelines.
• It solely focuses on object storage, overlooking block storage and its associated cost-related impact on overall cloud costs.

Top 10 MinIO Alternatives

Below mentioned are the top 10 MinI0 alternatives, that you must consider while making a choice.

1. Lucidity

Unlike MinIO and other alternatives in this list, Lucidity is a storage optimization solution focusing on Block Storage. Block storage is essential for a diverse range of cloud-based applications and services. Its significance in cloud computing primarily stems from its exceptional scalability, impressive performance, remarkable flexibility, steadfastness in data persistence, seamless integration with virtual machines, snapshot capabilities, and unwavering reliability.

Ignoring block storage can lead to various cost-related impacts, such as:

• Wasted resources: Disregarding block storage may result in inefficient utilization of storage resources, leading to wastage and increased costs.
• Suboptimal performance: Neglecting block storage would result in lower application performance and increased latency, impacting the user experience and necessitating additional costs to address performance issues.

To understand the influence of block storage on cloud costs, we conducted an independent study focused on clients engaged with diverse cloud service providers. Our investigation unveiled pivotal revelations:

• Major Contributor to Cloud Costs: Block storage emerged as a substantial driver, accounting for a noteworthy proportion of cloud expenditures.
• Underutilization Across Key Areas: Block storage for critical elements such as root volumes, application disks, and self-hosted databases was identified as suboptimal, presenting an efficiency challenge.
• Persistent Downtime Despite Overprovisioning: Despite proactive overprovisioning measures, clients encountered a recurring challenge, experiencing downtime at least once per quarter.

Moreover, organizations had to improve their buffer to 65% to ensure sufficient storage. This would involve: 

• Manual management: Improving buffer through manual management in certain cloud service providers leads to adopting three tools and a substantial investment of time and effort from DevOps teams.
• Challenges of Disk Resizing Downtime: In certain cloud service providers, resizing a disk, say for a 1TB disk, a minimum downtime of 4 hours is required. This downtime negatively impacts operational continuity, causing disruptions to normal business activities.
• Latency Problems in Disk Expansion: Upgrading disks and making configuration changes involve copying significant data. As a result, this data transfer complexity leads to increased latency, ultimately affecting the system's overall responsiveness.
• Time Discrepancies in Scaling: A time frame of at least 6 hours between operations has been identified to enhance the buffer and accommodate subsequent scaling. However, adhering to this minimum time frame challenges maintaining a dynamic and responsive system.

These challenges compel organizations to overprovision resources. However, overprovisioning has a profound cost-related impact and reflects operational inefficiency. This is why there is a need for an automated storage optimization optimization solution that can reduce the hidden cloud cost resulting from inefficient storage resource usage.

Enters Lucidity!

Unlike MinIO, which focuses solely on object storage, Lucidity offers two automated solutions tailored for block storage optimization: Lucidity Storage Audit and Lucidity Block Storage Auto-Scaler.

Lucidity Storage Audit

The first step to effective storage optimization is discovering the overprovisioned and idle/unused resources. While there are many ways to go about it, such as manual discovery or monitoring tools, these techniques waste time, effort, and money. Furthermore, using these techniques can be financially degrading in the long run. This is where Lucidity Storage Audit Solutions comes to the rescue by automating the process of discovering overprovisioned and idle/unused resources.

An effortlessly deployable and executable tool, Lucidity Storage Audit is designed to streamline the identification of overprovisioned, idle, or unused storage resources. It will help you unlock valuable insights into crucial aspects of your cloud infrastructure, such as:

Overall Disk Spend Optimization

• Gain a comprehensive understanding of your disk-related expenses.
• Learn how to cut costs by an impressive 70%.

Disk Wastage Analysis

• Pinpoint the sources of resource wastage, encompassing idle volumes and over-provisioned storage.
• Learn how to eliminate inefficiencies, fostering optimized resource utilization.

Disk Downtime Risk Mitigation

• Help address potential downtimes, mitigating financial and reputational damage.

Proceeding further, if there are idle/unused storage resources, you can delete them; if there are overprovisioned storage resources, you can rightsize them.

Lucidity Block Storage Auto-Scaler

The next and most crucial step in optimizing storage resources is automating the provisioning of storage resources to eliminate the possibility of overprovisioning or underprovisioning. Lucidity's Block Storage Auto-Scaler can achieve this.

Lucidity Block Storage Auto-Scaler has designed the industry's first block autonomous storage orchestration solution to make block storage of leading cloud service providers like AWS, Azure, and GCP economical and reliable. 

Once the overprovisioned and idle/unused resources are identified, we deploy Lucidity Block Storage Auto-Scaler, which offers the following benefits:

• Seamless Shrinkage and Expansion: Lucidity Block Storage Auto-Scaler seamlessly automates the shrinkage and expansion of storage resources, guaranteeing constant availability regardless of fluctuating requirements.
• Storage Cost Savings (Up to 70%): By automating the shrinkage and expansion process, Lucidity Block Storage Auto-Scaler ensures precise resource allocation, eliminating the need for overprovisioning. This optimization translates to significant savings of up to 70% on storage costs.
• ROI Calculator for Transparent Savings Visualization: The ROI Calculator effortlessly estimates potential savings. All you have to do is input basic details such as disk spend and growth rate to visualize your storage cost savings.

• Zero Downtime Assurance: Manual provisioning processes often involve downtime risks. Lucidity Block Storage Auto-Scaler eliminates this concern by automatically adjusting resources based on changing requirements, ensuring a seamless experience without room for downtime.
• Customizable Policies with "Create Policy" Feature: Lucidity's robust "Create Policy" feature allows users to define policies with specific details like desired utilization, maximum disk size, and buffer size. The Block Storage Auto-Scaler executes shrinkage and expansion seamlessly based on these policies, committing to a downtime-free experience.

If deciphering the reasons behind a soaring cloud bill proves challenging, your cloud storage might be the culprit. Schedule a Lucidity demo for a comprehensive storage audit and discover how automation can lead to substantial long-term cost savings.

2. Red Hat Ceph Storage

Red Hat Ceph Storage is an open-source platform designed for enterprise use. It offers software-defined storage solutions that can be implemented on affordable, standard servers and disks. This platform effortlessly merges block, object, and file storage, establishing a flexible and comprehensive environment. It efficiently and autonomously handles all the data, ensuring scalability and adaptability to meet various storage requirements.

Features

• Organizations can shrink or expand storage clusters with no downtime.
• Offers integrated data protection and security features that safeguard the data from outside threats.
• Helps data scientists and data-intensive users with storage as service-like capabilities.

Customer Rating

• G2: 4.2

3. Qumulo

Qumulo is a data storage and management platform that caters to a wide range of needs, including user data, backup archives, and surveillance applications. It seamlessly integrates with renowned backup platforms like Veeam and Veritas. This integration simplifies the backup management process, providing users with an intuitive and efficient way to handle their backup strategies. 

Features

• Seamlessly scale from 100 TB to 100 EB in a single namespace.
• Offers elastic scalability without any operational cost.
• Qumulo Global Namespace lets users combine multiple Qumulo instances on-premise, in the cloud, or on edge using a single data plane. 

Customer Rating

• G2: 4.8

4. Pure Storage Flash Blade

FlashBlade offers advanced scale-out storage solutions to manage unstructured data. With its modern architecture and high parallelism, FlashBlade surpasses traditional storage boundaries by efficiently integrating and simplifying complex data silos, such as backup appliances and data lakes. It effectively streamlines and consolidates diverse data sources, providing a seamless and efficient platform for uncovering valuable insights. Regarding unstructured data storage, FlashBlade sets the benchmark for cutting-edge technology and transformative data management.

Features

• It offers a high-performance-consolidated storage platform for both file and object workloads.
• It efficiently supports heavy data and unstructured workloads, offering unequaled density, capacity, and performance.
• Enhances the platform's lifetime with advanced, non-disruptive hardware and software upgrades with Evergreen/Forever.

Customer Rating

• Gartner: 4.8

5. NetApp StorageGRID

NetApp StorageGRID is a software-defined storage solution built on an object-based architecture. It seamlessly supports various industry-standard object APIs, including the Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) API and the OpenStack Swift API. It is a strategic choice for organizations searching for more than just storage that delivers secure and durable storage for unstructured data on a large scale. With integrated metadata-driven lifecycle management policies, StorageGRID efficiently manages data. 

Features

• Automated lifecycle management for stringing, securing, and cost-effectively preserving unstructured data.
• Offers advanced features for disaster management and enhancement of security and compliance.
• Purpose-built load balancers offer scalability with fluctuating requirements. 

Customer Rating

• G2: 4.6

6. IBM Cloud Object Storage

IBM Cloud Object Storage is a web-scale platform engineered to store unstructured data ranging from petabytes to exabytes. This state-of-the-art solution boasts reliability, robust security measures, high availability, and disaster recovery capabilities. This platform seamlessly manages massive volumes of unstructured data, pushing the boundaries of conventional storage approaches. It ensures the data is safeguarded and backed by a scalable, resilient architecture that evolves alongside modern data storage demands.

Features

• Using SecureSlice, IBM enhances data protection and transforms data dispersal to establish a robust and dependable storage environment. 
• With IBM Cloud Object Storage, businesses can efficiently store data for AI workloads at a lower cost.
• Implementing versioning ensures the preservation of various object iterations in a bucket, safeguarding against accidental deletions or modifications.

Customer Rating

• G2: 3.8

7. Nutanix Unified Storage

NutaNix Unified Storage is a software-defined data service platform that combines management and protection of siloed file, block, and object storage into a single unified platform. It leverages the capabilities of robust data services, including analytics, protection against ransomware, lifecycle management, and data protection. These functionalities empower organizations to effortlessly accommodate the evolving demands of contemporary applications, thereby shifting their emphasis from data storage to data management.

Features

• It facilitates data retention and compliance policy implementation by ensuring data fidelity and immutability.
• Its seamless, integrated encryption safeguards data at the FIPS 140-2 compliance level.
• Designed specifically for big data, cloud-native, and deep archive workloads, it offers S3-compatible storage.
• This single and flexible platform accommodates diverse workloads from file and block to VM and more.

Customer Rating

• G2: 4.5

8. Zadara

Zadara is an enterprise-level storage solution meticulously designed to address every facet of a user's data storage requirements. Its versatility extends to deployment in any location, compatibility with any protocol, and seamless storage of diverse data types essential to an organization. What sets Zadara apart is its ability to empower organizations to execute tasks previously achievable only through more traditional systems but in a cost-effective and highly efficient manner.

Features

• It facilitates the customization of the storage structure according to specific requirements through a user-friendly graphical interface (GUI) and a REST API.
• Users can easily modify processor performance, adjust the number and types of dedicated drives (including SSD, SAS, and SATA), and enhance data protection levels (such as RAID 1 and 10) whenever necessary.
• The provision of graphical performance logging empowers users to monitor and optimize application performance effectively.

Customer Rating

• G2: 4.4

9. Hitachi Content Platform

The Hitachi Content Platform (HCP) is an advanced object storage solution that offers a wide range of functionalities for IT organizations and cloud service providers. This platform enables seamless storage, sharing, syncing, protection, preservation, analysis, and retrieval of file data from a unified system. Compared to traditional file storage solutions, HCP outperforms efficiency, user-friendliness, and data-handling capacity. Notably, it automates day-to-day IT operations, including robust data protection measures. Its adaptability to changes in scale, scope, applications, storage, server configurations, and emerging cloud technologies ensures a dynamic and future-ready solution for evolving digital landscapes.

Features

• The system can handle all sorts of data, from essential text files to enormous multi-gigabyte database images.
• Hitachi Content Platform seamlessly performs different tasks within a single system, encompassing the storage, sharing, synchronization, protection, preservation, analysis, and retrieval of file data.

Customer Rating

• G2: 4.7

10. AWS Storage Gateway

The AWS Storage Gateway is an essential part of Amazon Web Services. It is a flexible storage gateway solution designed explicitly for data stored in Amazon S3, the Simple Storage Service. It stands out with its wide variety of cloud gateways, such as the File Gateway for object storage, Tape Gateway, and Volume Gateway for block storage volumes. This enables AWS Storage Gateway to provide quick access to on-premises applications and data stored in the cloud. 

Features

• It enables seamless integration with Amazon S3 as object storage.
• Supports industry-standard file protocols, allowing applications to access objects as files.
• Offers two configurations: Gateway-Cached Volumes and Gateway-Stored Volumes.
• Allows on-premises applications to use cloud-backed storage volumes with low-latency access.

Customer Rating

• G2: 4.5

Ensure Robust Storage With MinIO Alternatives!

Our blog on alternatives to MinIO uncovers a wide range of robust and feature-rich solutions that cater to diverse storage needs. Each option offers its strengths, bringing flexibility, scalability, and efficient management of unstructured data. Whether you prioritize open-source simplicity, seamless integration with cloud environments, or advanced data protection, the discussed MinIO alternatives present tailored storage solutions. By carefully assessing your specific requirements and evaluating these alternatives, you can make an informed decision that aligns with your organization's storage demands and future scalability.

‍