The benefits of object storage as primary storage.
MinIO was created to store and distribute large-scale data infrastructure on every cloud environment -- public or private. Multicloud capabilities have been built into it from inception since its developers realized that a single cloud provider limits growth and agility while exposing the user to excessive expense.
The 41st IT Press Tour had the opportunity to meet with AB Periasamy, CEO and Jonathan Symonds, CMO following the announcement of their $103 million funding round.
What is MinIO?
MinIO is a High-performance Kubernetes-native object store designed for large-scale data infrastructure. It has been built from scratch to be cloud-native and has become the storage standard for multi-cloud architectures.
The vision and guiding principles for the company and the solution:
Cloud-native, Kubernetes native, born in the cloud with cloud-native DNA.
Performant to meet all client needs. Benchmarks prove it is the fastest object store in existence.
Simple because simplicity scales. It's why they focus only on object storage.
Object Storage as Primary Storage
Object storage is the storage medium of Kubernetes and the cloud. RESTful APIs have won.
Performance = Workloads. MinIO pioneered high-performance object storage software. NVMe + 100GbE were like jet fuel. Any workload is in play. Databases, AI, ML, advanced analytics.
Scale. Not just about exabytes, about performance at scale. Object storage simply scales better than alternative technologies. Immutability also makes it safer.
What makes MinIO fast?
Single-layer, object only. Multiple layers cause latency, complexity.
SIMD acceleration. Writing the core parts of the MinIO in Assembly Language results in hyperfast performance on commodity hardware.
No metadata database. By writing object and metadata together all operations are single and atomic. Other vendors require multiple steps.
Combination of GO + GOASM. Delivering faster than C performance by combining GO + Assembly Language and targeting them to the task.
MinIO runs infrastructure more efficiently than AWS, Azure, or GCP -- and any other cloud.
Multi-Cloud Strategy
Public cloud is just a fraction of the cloud opportunity as more enterprises explore hybrid multi-cloud solutions to meet their diverse needs and manage expenses.
Multicloud with AWS, Azure, Google, Oracle, IBM. No public cloud runs on another public cloud today.
Hybrid cloud on-prem (private cloud) and the public cloud. Outpost, Anthos, and Stack are not hybrid, they are mono-cloud deployments with more geographic reach.
Kubernetes distros + the Edge. OpenShift and Tanzu lead but Ezmeral, Rancher/SUSE and others will be players. No public cloud player is on any of them.
MinIO works across all clouds, it's the only true multi-cloud. On every public cloud (1M+ deployments), the Private cloud (every Kubernetes distribution), colocations, and the edge.
Competitors are blocked. Object storage as a service doesn’t scale to other clouds – public clouds are not compatible. Appliances can’t be containerized.
Consistency and simplicity. One API works on any cloud. Even AWS S3 cannot make that claim. Tens of thousands of users have hardened the S3 implementation. MinIO has been software-defined since its inception.
Managed applications links to public cloud stores. Azure benchmarked dozens of instances to determine the best price-performance ratio. AWS conducted a TCO analysis for more than 220 AWS instances. GCP is still working out the billing piece but also went NVMe in four nodes spread across zones in the region.
Kubernetes native object storage = MinIO
Built on the K8s API. MinIO was built natively for RESTful APIs – not POSIX. It doesn’t require drivers or connectors – it just works.
S3 compatible. S3 is the default API for object storage and Minio is the leader in compatibility.
Containerized and orchestrated. More than 62% of MinIO instances are containerized. More than 43% of those are managed via K8s. This is consistent with the highest levels in the industry.
MinIO SUBNET
A commercial license comes with support that’s a combination of automation and direct-to-engineer interaction. It is priced and billed like the public cloud capacity-based, billed monthly, and published pricing. The software makes SUBNET work.
AB sees their SUBNET as a source of sustainable competitive advantage since the cloud-native DNA has the ability to run anywhere. They are bringing the public cloud buying experience to the private cloud. Appliance vendors cannot match the site license.
Summary
More with more – the firepower to build out key components. Here for the long-term.
Continued innovation – just getting started when AWS S3 looks to be out of ideas.
A commercial engine – a different machine, highly efficient and scalable.