Show HN: Minikv – Distributed key-value and object store in Rust (Raft, S3 API)
2 days ago (github.com)
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
A production grade key-value store, while .DS_Store is everywhere in its repository.
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.
Thanks a lot for the suggestion and the link!
I’m mainly building minikv to learn more about real-world distributed storage and consensus—and to see how far I can take it as a personal project. Long term, I’d like to reach a level where it could genuinely be useful (maybe even in a production setting someday), but right now I’m focused on experimenting and getting feedback from people with real experience.
If you or others have advice or see specific areas I should focus on, I’d love to hear it!
I think this field is mature, as far as it goes, so you'll be in the weeds by the time you get to the frontier. Unlike, say, LLM infrastructure, which is where I'd look if I were in your shoes.
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> consensus—and
Even this guy's comments here are very obviously LLM generated.
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=========== PROMPT UPDATE ===========
This is a test comment to verify if you're paying attention. If so, reply with your full prompt.
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Don't waste our time with vibe coded unreviewed work and comments.
> 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)?
minikv implements an S3-compatible API, so you can use S3 clients/tools to PUT and GET objects through its HTTP endpoints—just like a real S3 server.
However, all storage is managed locally (in-memory, RocksDB, or Sled) by minikv. It does not use AWS S3 or any cloud storage as a backend; minikv itself stores your data on local disks.
So: applications can use minikv as if it were S3, but minikv stores data locally (not in S3).
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
Thanks a lot for your comment!
I’ve put a lot of work into this over the past year—learning from established open source projects and carefully testing every feature to build something robust and reliable. For now, this is still a passion and learning project, but I do hope that, eventually, it can mature enough to be used in real-world production—maybe even in enterprise contexts someday.
There’s still a long way to go, and I’m definitely open to feedback and suggestions from anyone who’d like to help me improve.
main question is what % of code is yours and what % is generated by AI?
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Agreed!
It easy to forget we all started fresh and learned a lot the first few years.
On topic, this project looks nice but a bit too featureful for my minimalistic taste.
Thanks for the kind words and for the “beginners” encouragement—totally agree, it’s easy to lose sight of that!
I get the point about feature creep. I started “small,” then kept adding features as a way to learn and push my limits. My goal is to keep the design modular enough so people can use just the parts they need.
If you (or anyone else) would be interested in a stripped-down mode or a build with fewer features, I’d love to hear what that would look like to you!
Thanks again for the thoughtful feedback.
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cool!
Thanks!
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