Drop-in Binary Replacement: Migrate from MinIO to RustFS

[loverustfs]

Binary Replacement: A Simple Way to Migrate from MinIO to RustFS

Today we are excited to announce that RustFS has introduced a key feature in the latest release (1.0.0-alpha.89): users can now migrate from MinIO to RustFS through direct binary replacement.

As is widely known, MinIO has archived its open source repository. However, there are still tens of millions of instances worldwide running older open-source versions of MinIO. These versions no longer receive security updates, and over time the security risks associated with these instances continue to grow.

RustFS is an S3-compatible distributed object storage system written in Rust and released under the Apache License 2.0. The project has already surpassed 23k stars on GitHub. RustFS can serve as a fully compatible replacement for MinIO.

Benefits of Migration

• Cost Savings: You don't need to provision new storage infrastructure for RustFS. Existing MinIO storage infrastructure can be reused directly, which significantly reduces storage costs.Especially for users whose data volumes exceed hundreds of gigabytes or even petabytes.

• Security Assurance: Instances running the MinIO open-source edition no longer receive security updates and therefore face growing security risks. RustFS is actively maintained, and the team can respond to security issues in a timely manner.

• Seamless Integration: Because RustFS is fully S3-compatible, this conversion does not introduce significant changes to existing workflows. As a result, RustFS can be seamlessly integrated into existing systems with minimal disruption.

How to Migrate?

Binary and docker installation can be converted directly.

For Binary Installation

For example, if your MinIO instance was started with the following command:

minio server /data/minio --console-address ":9001"

Then you can follow the steps below to complete the migration.

• Step 1: Download the latest version

Download the latest RustFS binary for your OS and architecture:

curl -O https://github.com/rustfs/rustfs/releases/download/1.0.0-alpha.89/rustfs-linux-x86_64-gnu-latest.zip

• Step 2: Extract the archive and prepare the binary

unzip rustfs-linux-x86_64-gnu-latest.zip
chmod +x rustfs

• Step 3: Start the RustFS instance

Starting the RustFS instance with MinIO data,

./rustfs  server /data/minio --address ":9000" --console-enable --console-address ":9001" --access-key "rustfsadmin" --secret-key "rustfsadmin"

After the conversion, you can verify the migration by accessing http://ip:9001.

For Docker Installation

If your instance installed with docker-compose.yml,

services:
  MinIO:
    hostname: MinIO
    image: MinIO/MinIO:RELEASE.2025-04-22T22-12-26Z
    command: server --console-address ":9001" /data{1...4}
    ports:
      - "9000:9000"
      - "9001:9001"
    environment:
      MinIO_ROOT_USER: MinIOadmin
      MinIO_ROOT_PASSWORD: MinIOadmin
    healthcheck:
      test: ["CMD", "mc", "ready", "local"]
      interval: 5s
      timeout: 5s
      retries: 5
    volumes:
      - data1:/data1
      - data2:/data2
      - data3:/data3
      - data4:/data4
    networks:
      - minio-rustfs

volumes:
  data1:
  data2:
  data3:
  data4:

networks:
  minio-rustfs:
    driver: bridge

You can migrate to RustFS by replacing the image and updating the environment variables:

services:
  rustfs:
    image: rustfs/rustfs:1.0.0-alpha.89
    container_name: rustfs
    hostname: rustfs
    environment:
      - RUSTFS_VOLUMES=/data{1...4}
      - RUSTFS_ADDRESS=0.0.0.0:9000
      - RUSTFS_CONSOLE_ENABLE=true
      - RUSTFS_CONSOLE_ADDRESS=0.0.0.0:9001
      - RUSTFS_ACCESS_KEY=rustfsadmin
      - RUSTFS_SECRET_KEY=rustfsadmin
    ports:
      - "9000:9000"  # API endpoint
      - "9001:9001"  # Console
    volumes:
      - data1:/data1
      - data2:/data2
      - data3:/data3
      - data4:/data4
    networks:
      - minio-rustfs

networks:
  rustfs:
    driver: bridge
    name: minio-rustfs


volumes:
  data1:
  data2:
  data3:
  data4:

Supported Migrated Items

Because the internal data formats of MinIO and RustFS are different, not all MinIO data can currently be migrated automatically. The latest version supports migration of the following items:

1. Bucket metadata
2. Objects, including labels, object locks, and versioning
3. Bucket replication configuration
4. IAM configuration
5. Lifecycle management
6. Layer management

The following items are currently not supported:

1. Site replication
2. Event notifications
3. MinIO online configuration
4. LDAP and OIDC

If you encounter any issue during the migration, please feedback in GitHub repo issue.

RustFS Roadmap

Currently, RustFS is in the alpha. The planned timeline for upcoming releases will be:

• Beta: We plan to move RustFS to beta in April.
• GA: We plan to release the GA version in July.

Also, we plan to support RDMA, DPU etc, and we will build RustFS as the key storage system for AI infrastructure in AI era.

Get Started with RustFS

Try RustFS today and experience seamless migration from MinIO.

• GitHub: https://github.com/rustfs/rustfs
• Website: https://rustfs.com

[loverustfs]

https://github.com/rustfs/rustfs/releases/tag/1.0.0-alpha.89

[matthewlordtech]

This is amazing, and I thank you for your work

I'm ready to try the drop-in binary replacement and can provide feedback, but I have a few quick questions I couldn't find information on:

• Are there any downsides to importing a legacy MinIO data directory over initializing a fresh RustFS backend?
• Are RustFS's performance improvements over MinIO maintained when reading and writing to a legacy MinIO backend, or do only freshly created RustFS native buckets get those performance gains?
• Are there now (or predicted to be in future) any RustFS exclusive features which will require new RustFS native buckets and cannot be used with legacy MinIO backends?

Thank you again for making this

[vin-im]

Thank you for making this.

[Zelin2001]

@loverustfs

It will be very exciting to get an alternative to AIStor.
I have been running a minio setup with 2 erasure sets, each on a physical node. The volume setup is something like:

MINIO_VOLUMES="http://minio1.domain:9000/mnt/drive-{1...4}/s3 http://minio2.domain:9000/mnt/drive-{1...5}/s3"

However, RustFS disallow a pool with only 1 or 2 nodes.
#2139

Could I do the drop-in binary replacement and go to RustFS?

[Dosulute-chemist]

The direct binary replacement approach is a really interesting migration strategy, especially for users with large existing MinIO deployments. It would be helpful to have a detailed migration checklist covering backup verification, rollback procedures, version compatibility, and how to validate data integrity after the replacement. That would give production users more confidence when migrating critical workloads.