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Show HN: Minikv – Distributed key-value and object store in Rust (Raft, S3 API)

by whispem on 1/17/26, 7:39 PM with 39 comments

Hi HN,

I’m releasing minikv, a distributed key-value and object store in Rust.

What is minikv? 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. I started minikv as a learning project about distributed systems, and it grew into something production-ready and fun to extend.

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):

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/hello

Docs, 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

  • by esafak on 1/17/26, 8:06 PM

    If you are really interested in this subject, you might want to read https://dataintensive.net/

    If you clarify what your goals are, broadly speaking, maybe we can give advice.

  • by riku_iki on 1/17/26, 7:52 PM

    Interesting chronology:

    Feb 2025: first encounter with coding

    oct 2025: started learning rust

    Jan 2026: production grade distributed kv store with transactions, enterprise security, durability, etc

  • by ritcgab on 1/18/26, 2:02 AM

    A production grade key-value store, while .DS_Store is everywhere in its repository.

  • by OutOfHere on 1/19/26, 5:28 AM

    Don't waste our time with vibe coded unreviewed work and comments.

  • by RomanPushkin on 1/18/26, 11:01 PM

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  • by wavemode on 1/17/26, 9:14 PM

    > S3-compatible object storage

    Does this mean mimikv can use S3 to store data? Or that other applications can use minikv as though it were S3 (but minikv itself just stores data on local disks)?

  • by botirk on 1/17/26, 8:58 PM

    cool!