MinIO Quickstart Guide

MinIO is a high-performance, S3-compatible object storage solution released under the GNU AGPL v3.0 license. Designed for speed and scalability, it powers AI/ML, analytics, and data-intensive workloads with industry-leading performance.

🔹 S3 API Compatible – Seamless integration with existing S3 tools 🔹 Built for AI & Analytics – Optimized for large-scale data pipelines 🔹 High Performance – Ideal for demanding storage workloads.

AI storage documentation (https://min.io/solutions/object-storage-for-ai).

This README provides quickstart instructions on running MinIO on bare metal hardware, including container-based installations. For Kubernetes environments, use the MinIO Kubernetes Operator.

Container Installation

Use the following commands to run a standalone MinIO server as a container.

Standalone MinIO servers are best suited for early development and evaluation. Certain features such as versioning, object locking, and bucket replication require distributed deploying MinIO with Erasure Coding. For extended development and production, deploy MinIO with Erasure Coding enabled - specifically, with a minimum of 4 drives per MinIO server. See MinIO Erasure Code Overview for more complete documentation.

Stable

Run the following command to run the latest stable image of MinIO as a container using an ephemeral data volume:

podman run -p 9000:9000 -p 9001:9001 \
  quay.io/minio/minio server /data --console-address ":9001"

The MinIO deployment starts using default root credentials minioadmin:minioadmin. You can test the deployment using the MinIO Console, an embedded object browser built into MinIO Server. Point a web browser running on the host machine to http://127.0.0.1:9000 and log in with the root credentials. You can use the Browser to create buckets, upload objects, and browse the contents of the MinIO server.

You can also connect using any S3-compatible tool, such as the MinIO Client mc commandline tool. See Test using MinIO Client mc for more information on using the mc commandline tool. For application developers, see https://min.io/docs/minio/linux/developers/minio-drivers.html to view MinIO SDKs for supported languages.

[!NOTE] To deploy MinIO on with persistent storage, you must map local persistent directories from the host OS to the container using the podman -v option. For example, -v /mnt/data:/data maps the host OS drive at /mnt/data to /data on the container.

macOS

Use the following commands to run a standalone MinIO server on macOS.

Standalone MinIO servers are best suited for early development and evaluation. Certain features such as versioning, object locking, and bucket replication require distributed deploying MinIO with Erasure Coding. For extended development and production, deploy MinIO with Erasure Coding enabled - specifically, with a minimum of 4 drives per MinIO server. See MinIO Erasure Code Overview for more complete documentation.

Homebrew (recommended)

Run the following command to install the latest stable MinIO package using Homebrew. Replace /data with the path to the drive or directory in which you want MinIO to store data.

brew install minio/stable/minio
minio server /data

[!NOTE] If you previously installed minio using brew install minio then it is recommended that you reinstall minio from minio/stable/minio official repo instead.

brew uninstall minio
brew install minio/stable/minio

The MinIO deployment starts using default root credentials minioadmin:minioadmin. You can test the deployment using the MinIO Console, an embedded web-based object browser built into MinIO Server. Point a web browser running on the host machine to http://127.0.0.1:9000 and log in with the root credentials. You can use the Browser to create buckets, upload objects, and browse the contents of the MinIO server.

You can also connect using any S3-compatible tool, such as the MinIO Client mc commandline tool. See Test using MinIO Client mc for more information on using the mc commandline tool. For application developers, see https://min.io/docs/minio/linux/developers/minio-drivers.html/ to view MinIO SDKs for supported languages.

Binary Download

Use the following command to download and run a standalone MinIO server on macOS. Replace /data with the path to the drive or directory in which you want MinIO to store data.

wget https://dl.min.io/server/minio/release/darwin-amd64/minio
chmod +x minio
./minio server /data

The MinIO deployment starts using default root credentials minioadmin:minioadmin. You can test the deployment using the MinIO Console, an embedded web-based object browser built into MinIO Server. Point a web browser running on the host machine to http://127.0.0.1:9000 and log in with the root credentials. You can use the Browser to create buckets, upload objects, and browse the contents of the MinIO server.

You can also connect using any S3-compatible tool, such as the MinIO Client mc commandline tool. See Test using MinIO Client mc for more information on using the mc commandline tool. For application developers, see https://min.io/docs/minio/linux/developers/minio-drivers.html to view MinIO SDKs for supported languages.

GNU/Linux

Use the following command to run a standalone MinIO server on Linux hosts running 64-bit Intel/AMD architectures. Replace /data with the path to the drive or directory in which you want MinIO to store data.

wget https://dl.min.io/server/minio/release/linux-amd64/minio
chmod +x minio
./minio server /data

The following table lists supported architectures. Replace the wget URL with the architecture for your Linux host.

Architecture	URL
64-bit Intel/AMD	https://dl.min.io/server/minio/release/linux-amd64/minio
64-bit ARM	https://dl.min.io/server/minio/release/linux-arm64/minio
64-bit PowerPC LE (ppc64le)	https://dl.min.io/server/minio/release/linux-ppc64le/minio

The MinIO deployment starts using default root credentials minioadmin:minioadmin. You can test the deployment using the MinIO Console, an embedded web-based object browser built into MinIO Server. Point a web browser running on the host machine to http://127.0.0.1:9000 and log in with the root credentials. You can use the Browser to create buckets, upload objects, and browse the contents of the MinIO server.

You can also connect using any S3-compatible tool, such as the MinIO Client mc commandline tool. See Test using MinIO Client mc for more information on using the mc commandline tool. For application developers, see https://min.io/docs/minio/linux/developers/minio-drivers.html to view MinIO SDKs for supported languages.

[!NOTE] Standalone MinIO servers are best suited for early development and evaluation. Certain features such as versioning, object locking, and bucket replication require distributed deploying MinIO with Erasure Coding. For extended development and production, deploy MinIO with Erasure Coding enabled - specifically, with a minimum of 4 drives per MinIO server. See MinIO Erasure Code Overview for more complete documentation.

Microsoft Windows

To run MinIO on 64-bit Windows hosts, download the MinIO executable from the following URL:

https://dl.min.io/server/minio/release/windows-amd64/minio.exe

Use the following command to run a standalone MinIO server on the Windows host. Replace D:\ with the path to the drive or directory in which you want MinIO to store data. You must change the terminal or powershell directory to the location of the minio.exe executable, or add the path to that directory to the system $PATH:

minio.exe server D:\

The MinIO deployment starts using default root credentials minioadmin:minioadmin. You can test the deployment using the MinIO Console, an embedded web-based object browser built into MinIO Server. Point a web browser running on the host machine to http://127.0.0.1:9000 and log in with the root credentials. You can use the Browser to create buckets, upload objects, and browse the contents of the MinIO server.

You can also connect using any S3-compatible tool, such as the MinIO Client mc commandline tool. See Test using MinIO Client mc for more information on using the mc commandline tool. For application developers, see https://min.io/docs/minio/linux/developers/minio-drivers.html to view MinIO SDKs for supported languages.

[!NOTE] Standalone MinIO servers are best suited for early development and evaluation. Certain features such as versioning, object locking, and bucket replication require distributed deploying MinIO with Erasure Coding. For extended development and production, deploy MinIO with Erasure Coding enabled - specifically, with a minimum of 4 drives per MinIO server. See MinIO Erasure Code Overview for more complete documentation.

Install from Source

Use the following commands to compile and run a standalone MinIO server from source. Source installation is only intended for developers and advanced users. If you do not have a working Golang environment, please follow How to install Golang. Minimum version required is go1.24

go install github.com/minio/minio@latest

The MinIO deployment starts using default root credentials minioadmin:minioadmin. You can test the deployment using the MinIO Console, an embedded web-based object browser built into MinIO Server. Point a web browser running on the host machine to http://127.0.0.1:9000 and log in with the root credentials. You can use the Browser to create buckets, upload objects, and browse the contents of the MinIO server.

You can also connect using any S3-compatible tool, such as the MinIO Client mc commandline tool. See Test using MinIO Client mc for more information on using the mc commandline tool. For application developers, see https://min.io/docs/minio/linux/developers/minio-drivers.html to view MinIO SDKs for supported languages.

[!NOTE] Standalone MinIO servers are best suited for early development and evaluation. Certain features such as versioning, object locking, and bucket replication require distributed deploying MinIO with Erasure Coding. For extended development and production, deploy MinIO with Erasure Coding enabled - specifically, with a minimum of 4 drives per MinIO server. See MinIO Erasure Code Overview for more complete documentation.

MinIO strongly recommends against using compiled-from-source MinIO servers for production environments.

Deployment Recommendations

Allow port access for Firewalls

By default MinIO uses the port 9000 to listen for incoming connections. If your platform blocks the port by default, you may need to enable access to the port.

ufw

For hosts with ufw enabled (Debian based distros), you can use ufw command to allow traffic to specific ports. Use below command to allow access to port 9000

ufw allow 9000

Below command enables all incoming traffic to ports ranging from 9000 to 9010.

ufw allow 9000:9010/tcp

firewall-cmd

For hosts with firewall-cmd enabled (CentOS), you can use firewall-cmd command to allow traffic to specific ports. Use below commands to allow access to port 9000

firewall-cmd --get-active-zones

This command gets the active zone(s). Now, apply port rules to the relevant zones returned above. For example if the zone is public, use

firewall-cmd --zone=public --add-port=9000/tcp --permanent

[!NOTE] permanent makes sure the rules are persistent across firewall start, restart or reload. Finally reload the firewall for changes to take effect.

firewall-cmd --reload

iptables

For hosts with iptables enabled (RHEL, CentOS, etc), you can use iptables command to enable all traffic coming to specific ports. Use below command to allow access to port 9000

iptables -A INPUT -p tcp --dport 9000 -j ACCEPT
service iptables restart

Below command enables all incoming traffic to ports ranging from 9000 to 9010.

iptables -A INPUT -p tcp --dport 9000:9010 -j ACCEPT
service iptables restart

Test MinIO Connectivity

Test using MinIO Console

MinIO Server comes with an embedded web based object browser. Point your web browser to http://127.0.0.1:9000 to ensure your server has started successfully.

[!NOTE] MinIO runs console on random port by default, if you wish to choose a specific port use --console-address to pick a specific interface and port.

Things to consider

MinIO redirects browser access requests to the configured server port (i.e. 127.0.0.1:9000) to the configured Console port. MinIO uses the hostname or IP address specified in the request when building the redirect URL. The URL and port must be accessible by the client for the redirection to work.

For deployments behind a load balancer, proxy, or ingress rule where the MinIO host IP address or port is not public, use the MINIO_BROWSER_REDIRECT_URL environment variable to specify the external hostname for the redirect. The LB/Proxy must have rules for directing traffic to the Console port specifically.

For example, consider a MinIO deployment behind a proxy https://minio.example.net, https://console.minio.example.net with rules for forwarding traffic on port :9000 and :9001 to MinIO and the MinIO Console respectively on the internal network. Set MINIO_BROWSER_REDIRECT_URL to https://console.minio.example.net to ensure the browser receives a valid reachable URL.

Dashboard	Creating a bucket

Test using MinIO Client mc

mc provides a modern alternative to UNIX commands like ls, cat, cp, mirror, diff etc. It supports filesystems and Amazon S3 compatible cloud storage services. Follow the MinIO Client Quickstart Guide for further instructions.

Upgrading MinIO

Upgrades require zero downtime in MinIO, all upgrades are non-disruptive, all transactions on MinIO are atomic. So upgrading all the servers simultaneously is the recommended way to upgrade MinIO.

[!NOTE] requires internet access to update directly from https://dl.min.io, optionally you can host any mirrors at https://my-artifactory.example.com/minio/

• For deployments that installed the MinIO server binary by hand, use mc admin update

mc admin update <minio alias, e.g., myminio>

• For deployments without external internet access (e.g. airgapped environments), download the binary from https://dl.min.io and replace the existing MinIO binary let's say for example /opt/bin/minio, apply executable permissions chmod +x /opt/bin/minio and proceed to perform mc admin service restart alias/.

• For installations using Systemd MinIO service, upgrade via RPM/DEB packages parallelly on all servers or replace the binary lets say /opt/bin/minio on all nodes, apply executable permissions chmod +x /opt/bin/minio and process to perform mc admin service restart alias/.

Upgrade Checklist

• Test all upgrades in a lower environment (DEV, QA, UAT) before applying to production. Performing blind upgrades in production environments carries significant risk.
• Read the release notes for MinIO before performing any upgrade, there is no forced requirement to upgrade to latest release upon every release. Some release may not be relevant to your setup, avoid upgrading production environments unnecessarily.
• If you plan to use mc admin update, MinIO process must have write access to the parent directory where the binary is present on the host system.
• mc admin update is not supported and should be avoided in kubernetes/container environments, please upgrade containers by upgrading relevant container images.
• We do not recommend upgrading one MinIO server at a time, the product is designed to support parallel upgrades please follow our recommended guidelines.

Explore Further

• MinIO Erasure Code Overview
• Use mc with MinIO Server
• Use minio-go SDK with MinIO Server
• The MinIO documentation website

Contribute to MinIO Project

Please follow MinIO Contributor's Guide

License

• MinIO source is licensed under the GNU AGPLv3.
• MinIO documentation is licensed under CC BY 4.0.
• License Compliance