Minikv
Distributed key-value and object store in Rust (Raft, S3 API)
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Hi HN,I'm Emilie, I have a literature background (which explains the well-written documentation!) and I've been learning Rust and distributed systems by building minikv over the past few months. It recently got featured in Programmez! magazine: https://www.programmez.com/actualites/minikv-un-key-value-st...minikv is an open-source, distributed storage engine built for learning, experimentation, and self-hosted setups. It combines a strongly-consistent key-value database (Raft), S3-compatible object storage, and basic multi-tenancy.Features/highlights:- Raft consensus with automatic failover and sharding - S3-compatible HTTP API (plus REST/gRPC APIs) - Pluggable storage backends: in-memory, RocksDB, Sled - Multi-tenant: per-tenant namespaces, role-based access, quotas, and audit - Metrics (Prometheus), TLS, JWT-based API keys - Easy to deploy (single binary, works with Docker/Kubernetes)Quick demo (single node):```bash git clone https://github.com/whispem/minikv.git cd minikv cargo run --release -- --config config.example.toml curl localhost:8080/health/ready# S3 upload + read curl -X PUT localhost:8080/s3/mybucket/hello -d "hi HN" curl localhost:8080/s3/mybucket/helloDocs, cluster setup, and architecture details are in the repo. I’d love to hear feedback, questions, ideas, or your stories running distributed infra in Rust!Repo: https://github.com/whispem/minikv Crate: https://crates.io/crates/minikv
HN · launched Feb 3, 2026 · 71 upvotes (top 14%) · 0 views
Niche: database management systems and engines · 162 launches, 6 in the last 7 days ▼ -25% · Explore this niche →
Category and tags
- Horizontal
- Data infrastructure
- Developer
- Not AI
- Hobby / open-source project
Visit website ↗ Source listing ↗
More like this: all 162 launches in database management systems and engines →
Could you build this?
No Building a distributed key-value store with Raft consensus and an S3-compatible API requires deep expertise in systems programming, concurrency, and distributed consensus edge cases.
What it would actually take: Requires Rust with tokio, raft-rs (or a custom state machine implementation), and an HTTP engine parsing AWS S3 signatures and XML/chunked transfer protocols. The hard parts are handling network partitions, split-brain scenarios, log compaction, snapshot distribution, and linearizable reads under concurrent failures. This demands specialized knowledge of distributed systems theory and rigorous deterministic simulation testing (like Jepsen or Madsim).
Discussion
20 comments analyzed.
Competitors mentioned: s3proxy, Garage, MinIO, Rclone
Concerns raised: Cannot commit files via GitHub web interface one at a time, Production systems need transparent one-file-per-object storage, Raft + 2PC may be overkill for simple object storage, Memory scaling with concurrent clients and transactions
Feature requests: Official Docker Hub image, OCI scratch base image, One-file-per-object storage backend
Competitors
Other products that read as similar to this one : 526 launches clear the similarity bar, closest 8 shown.
Attention rank: #75 of 527 (itself plus its competitors, highest first, normalized so YC and Product Hunt are compared fairly).
Launched 96 days after the earliest competitor.
- gatekv · github · 2026-09-30 · 11 upvotes · similarity 0.67
- raft-kv-store · github · 2026-10-04 · 34 upvotes · similarity 0.58
- Shrouded, secure memory management in Rust · hn · 2026-03-23 · 5 upvotes · similarity 0.53
- KeyEnv · hn · 2026-01-18 · 5 upvotes · similarity 0.53
- SnkvDB · hn · 2026-02-16 · 5 upvotes · similarity 0.49
- Minigraf · hn · 2026-10-05 · 41 upvotes · similarity 0.47
- Lightweight C++23 S3 client with no extra deps (just curl and OpenSSL) · hn · 2026-06-13 · 5 upvotes · similarity 0.47
- casita · github · 2026-09-27 · 77 upvotes · similarity 0.47
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