docs/source/operations/checklists/hardware.rst

Hardware Checklist

minio

Table of Contents

Use the following checklist when planning the hardware configuration for a production, distributed MinIO deployment.

Considerations

When selecting hardware for your MinIO implementation, take into account the following factors:

• Expected amount of data in tebibytes to store at launch
• Expected growth in size of data for at least the next two years
• Number of objects by average object size
• Average retention time of data in years
• Number of sites to be deployed
• Number of expected buckets

Production Hardware Recommendations

The following checklist follows MinIO's Recommended Configuration for production deployments. The provided guidance is intended as a baseline and cannot replace |subnet| Performance Diagnostics, Architecture Reviews, and direct-to-engineering support.

MinIO, like any distributed system, benefits from selecting identical configurations for all nodes in a given server pool. Ensure a consistent selection of hardware (CPU, memory, motherboard, storage adapters) and software (operating system, kernel settings, system services) across pool nodes.

Deployments may exhibit unpredictable performance if nodes have varying hardware or software configurations. Workloads that benefit from storing aged data on lower-cost hardware should instead deploy a dedicated "warm" or "cold" MinIO deployment and transition <minio-lifecycle-management-tiering> data to that tier.

MinIO does not provide hosted services or hardware sales

See our Reference Hardware page for a curated selection of servers and storage components from our hardware partners.

k8s

not k8s

Important

The following areas have the greatest impact on MinIO performance, listed in order of importance:

Network Infrastructure	Insufficient or limited throughput constrains performance
Storage Controller	Old firmware, limited throughput, or failing hardware constrains performance and affects reliability
Storage (Drive)	Old firmware, or slow/aging/failing hardware constrains performance and affects reliability

Prioritize securing the necessary components for each of these areas before focusing on other hardware resources, such as compute-related constraints.

The minimum recommendations above reflect MinIO's experience with assisting enterprise customers in deploying on a variety of IT infrastructures while maintaining the desired SLA/SLO. While MinIO may run on less than the minimum recommended topology, any potential cost savings come at the risk of decreased reliability, performance, or overall functionality.

Networking

MinIO recommends high speed networking to support the maximum possible throughput of the attached storage (aggregated drives, storage controllers, and PCIe busses). The following table provides a general guideline for the maximum storage throughput supported by a given physical or virtual network interface. This table assumes all network infrastructure components, such as routers, switches, and physical cabling, also supports the NIC bandwidth.

NIC Bandwidth (Gbps)	Estimated Aggregated Storage Throughput (GBps)
10Gbps	1.25GBps
25Gbps	3.125GBps
50Gbps	6.25GBps
100Gbps	12.5GBps

Networking has the greatest impact on MinIO performance, where low per-host bandwidth artificially constrains the potential performance of the storage. The following examples of network throughput constraints assume spinning disks with ~100MB/S sustained I/O

• 1GbE network link can support up to 125MB/s, or one spinning disk
• 10GbE network can support approximately 1.25GB/s, potentially supporting 10-12 spinning disks
• 25GbE network can support approximately 3.125GB/s, potentially supporting ~30 spinning disks

Memory

Memory primarily constrains the number of concurrent simultaneous connections per node.

You can calculate the maximum number of concurrent requests per node with this formula:

totalRam/ramPerRequest

To calculate the amount of RAM used for each request, use this formula:

((2MiB + 128KiB) * driveCount) + (2 * 10MiB) + (2 * 1MiB)

10MiB is the default erasure block size v1. 1 MiB is the default erasure block size v2.

The following table lists the maximum concurrent requests on a node based on the number of host drives and the free system RAM:

Number of Drives	32 GiB of RAM	64 GiB of RAM	128 GiB of RAM	256 GiB of RAM	512 GiB of RAM
4 Drives	1,074	2,149	4,297	8,595	17,190
8 Drives	840	1,680	3,361	6,722	13,443
16 Drives	585	1,170	2.341	4,681	9,362

The following table provides general guidelines for allocating memory for use by MinIO based on the total amount of local storage on the node:

Total Host Storage	Recommended Host Memory
Up to 1 Tebibyte (Ti)	8GiB
Up to 10 Tebibyte (Ti)	16GiB
Up to 100 Tebibyte (Ti)	32GiB
Up to 1 Pebibyte (Pi)	64GiB
More than 1 Pebibyte (Pi)	128GiB

Important

Starting with RELEASE.2024-01-28T22-35-53Z, MinIO preallocates 2GiB of memory per node in distributed setups and 1GiB of memory for a single-node setup.

Storage

k8s

MinIO recommends provisioning a storage class for each MinIO Tenant that meets the performance objectives for that tenant.

Where possible, configure the Storage Class, CSI, or other provisioner underlying the PV to format volumes as XFS to ensure best performance.

Ensure a consistent underlying storage type (NVMe, SSD, HDD) for all PVs provisioned in a Tenant.

Ensure the same presented capacity of each PV across all nodes in each Tenant server pool <minio-intro-server-pool>. MinIO limits the maximum usable size per PV to the smallest PV in the pool. For example, if a pool has 15 10TB PVs and 1 1TB PV, MinIO limits the per-PV capacity to 1TB.

not k8s

Recommended Storage Mediums

MinIO recommends using flash-based storage (NVMe or SSD) for all workload types and scales. Workloads that require high performance should prefer NVMe over SSD.

MinIO deployments using HDD-based storage are best suited as cold-tier targets for Object Transition ("Tiering") <minio-lifecycle-management-tiering> of aged data. HDD storage typically does not provide the necessary performance to meet the expectations of modern workloads, and any cost efficiencies at scale are offset by the performance constraints of the medium.

Use Direct-Attached "Local" Storage (DAS)

DAS (Direct-Attached Storage), such as locally-attached JBOD (Just a Bunch of Disks) arrays, provide significant performance and consistency advantages over networked (NAS, SAN, NFS) storage.

Network File System Volumes Break Consistency Guarantees

MinIO's strict read-after-write and list-after-write consistency model requires local drive filesystems. MinIO cannot provide consistency guarantees if the underlying storage volumes are NFS or a similar network-attached storage volume.

Use XFS-Formatted Drives with Labels

Format drives as XFS and present them to MinIO as a JBOD (Just a Bunch of Disks) array with no RAID or other pooling configurations. Using any other type of backing storage (SAN/NAS, ext4, RAID, LVM) typically results in a reduction in performance, reliability, predictability, and consistency.

When formatting XFS drives, apply a unique label per drive. For example, the following command formats four drives as XFS and applies a corresponding drive label.

mkfs.xfs /dev/sdb -L MINIODRIVE1
mkfs.xfs /dev/sdc -L MINIODRIVE2
mkfs.xfs /dev/sdd -L MINIODRIVE3
mkfs.xfs /dev/sde -L MINIODRIVE4

Mount Drives using /etc/fstab

MinIO requires that drives maintain their ordering at the mounted position across restarts. MinIO does not support arbitrary migration of a drive with existing MinIO data to a new mount position, whether intentional or as the result of OS-level behavior.

You must use /etc/fstab or a similar mount control system to mount drives at a consistent path. For example:

$ nano /etc/fstab

# <file system>        <mount point>    <type>  <options>         <dump>  <pass>
LABEL=MINIODRIVE1      /mnt/drive-1     xfs     defaults,noatime  0       2
LABEL=MINIODRIVE2      /mnt/drive-2     xfs     defaults,noatime  0       2
LABEL=MINIODRIVE3      /mnt/drive-3     xfs     defaults,noatime  0       2
LABEL=MINIODRIVE4      /mnt/drive-4     xfs     defaults,noatime  0       2

You can use mount -a to mount those drives at those paths during initial setup. The Operating System should otherwise mount these drives as part of the node startup process.

MinIO strongly recommends using label-based mounting rules over UUID-based rules. Label-based rules allow swapping an unhealthy or non-working drive with a replacement that has matching format and label. UUID-based rules require editing the /etc/fstab file to replace mappings with the new drive UUID.

Note

Cloud environment instances which depend on mounted external storage may encounter boot failure if one or more of the remote file mounts return errors or failure. For example, an AWS ECS instance with mounted persistent EBS volumes may not boot with the standard /etc/fstab configuration if one or more EBS volumes fail to mount.

You can set the nofail option to silence error reporting at boot and allow the instance to boot with one or more mount issues.

You should not use this option on systems with locally attached disks, as silencing drive errors prevents both MinIO and the OS from responding to those errors in a normal fashion.

Disable XFS Retry On Error

MinIO strongly recommends disabling retry-on-error behavior using the max_retries configuration for the following error classes:

• EIO Error when reading or writing
• ENOSPC Error no space left on device
• default All other errors

The default max_retries setting typically directs the filesystem to retry-on-error indefinitely instead of propagating the error. MinIO can handle XFS errors appropriately, such that the retry-on-error behavior introduces at most unnecessary latency or performance degradation.

The following script iterates through all drives at the specified mount path and sets the XFS max_retries setting to 0 or "fail immediately on error" for the recommended error classes. The script ignores any drives not mounted, either manually or through /etc/fstab. Modify the /mnt/drive line to match the pattern used for your MinIO drives.

#!/bin/bash

for i in $(df -h | grep /mnt/drive | awk '{ print $1 }'); do
      mountPath="$(df -h | grep $i | awk '{ print $6 }')"
      deviceName="$(basename $i)"
      echo "Modifying xfs max_retries and retry_timeout_seconds for drive $i mounted at $mountPath"
      echo 0 > /sys/fs/xfs/$deviceName/error/metadata/EIO/max_retries
      echo 0 > /sys/fs/xfs/$deviceName/error/metadata/ENOSPC/max_retries
      echo 0 > /sys/fs/xfs/$deviceName/error/metadata/default/max_retries
done
exit 0

You must run this script on all MinIO nodes and configure the script to re-run on reboot, as Linux Operating Systems do not typically persist these changes. You can use a cron job with the @reboot timing to run the above script whenever the node restarts and ensure all drives have retry-on-error disabled. Use crontab -e to create the following job, modifying the script path to match that on each node:

@reboot /opt/minio/xfs-retry-settings.sh

Use Consistent Drive Type and Capacity

Ensure a consistent drive type (NVMe, SSD, HDD) for the underlying storage in a MinIO deployment. MinIO does not distinguish between storage types and does not support configuring "hot" or "warm" drives within a single deployment. Mixing drive types typically results in performance degradation, as the slowest drives in the deployment become a bottleneck regardless of the capabilities of the faster drives.

Use the same capacity and type of drive across all nodes in each MinIO server pool <minio-intro-server-pool>. MinIO limits the maximum usable size per drive to the smallest size in the deployment. For example, if a deployment has 15 10TB drives and 1 1TB drive, MinIO limits the per-drive capacity to 1TB.

Recommended Hardware Tests

Operating System Diagnostic Tools

If you cannot run the mc support diag or the results show unexpected results, you can use the operating system's default tools.

Test each drive independently on all servers to ensure they are identical in performance. Use the results of these OS-level tools to verify the capabilities of your storage hardware. Record the results for later reference.

1. Test the drive's performance during write operations

   This tests checks a drive's ability to write new data (uncached) to the drive by creating a specified number of blocks at up to a certain number of bytes at a time to mimic how a drive would function with writing uncached data. This allows you to see the actual drive performance with consistent file I/O.

   dd if=/dev/zero of=/mnt/driveN/testfile bs=128k count=80000 oflag=direct conv=fdatasync > dd-write-drive1.txt

   Replace driveN with the path for the drive you are testing.

   dd	The command to copy and paste data.
   if=/dev/zero	Read from /dev/zero, an system-generated endless stream of 0 bytes used to create a file of a specified size
   of=/mnt/driveN/testfile	Write to /mnt/driveN/testfile
   bs=128k	Write up to 128,000 bytes at a time
   count=80000	Write up to 80000 blocks of data
   oflag=direct	Use direct I/O to write to avoid data from caching
   conv=fdatasync	Physically write output file data before finishing
   > dd-write-drive1.txt	Write the contents of the operation's output to dd-write-drive1.txt in the current working directory

   The operation returns the number of files written, total size written in bytes, the total length of time for the operation (in seconds), and the speed of the writing in some order of bytes per second.

2. Test the drive's performance during read operations

   dd if=/mnt/driveN/testfile of=/dev/null bs=128k iflag=direct > dd-read-drive1.txt

   Replace driveN with the path for the drive you are testing.

   dd	The command to copy and paste data
   if=/mnt/driveN/testfile	Read from /mnt/driveN/testfile; replace with the path to the file to use for testing the drive's read performance
   of=/dev/null	Write to /dev/null, a virtual file that does not persist after the operation completes
   bs=128k	Write up to 128,000 bytes at a time
   count=80000	Write up to 80000 blocks of data
   iflag=direct	Use direct I/O to read and avoid data from caching
   > dd-read-drive1.txt	Write the contents of the operation's output to dd-read-drive1.txt in the current working directory

   Use a sufficiently sized file that mimics the primary use case for your deployment to get accurate read test results.

   The following guidelines may help during performance testing:

   • Small files: < 128KB
   • Normal files: 128KB – 1GB
   • Large files: > 1GB

   You can use the head command to create a file to use. The following command example creates a 10 Gigabyte file called testfile.

   head -c 10G </dev/urandom > testfile

   The operation returns the number of files read, total size read in bytes, the total length of time for the operation (in seconds), and the speed of the reading in bytes per second.

Third Party Diagnostic Tools

IO Controller test

Use IOzone to test the input/output controller and all drives in combination. Document the performance numbers for each server in your deployment.

iozone -s 1g -r 4m -i 0 -i 1 -i 2 -I -t 160 -F /mnt/sdb1/tmpfile.{1..16} /mnt/sdc1/tmpfile.{1..16} /mnt/sdd1/tmpfile.{1..16} /mnt/sde1/tmpfile.{1..16} /mnt/sdf1/tmpfile.{1..16} /mnt/sdg1/tmpfile.{1..16} /mnt/sdh1/tmpfile.{1..16} /mnt/sdi1/tmpfile.{1..16} /mnt/sdj1/tmpfile.{1..16} /mnt/sdk1/tmpfile.{1..16} > iozone.txt

-s 1g	Size of 1G per file
-r	4m 4MB block size
-i #	0=write/rewrite, 1=read/re-read, 2=random-read/write
-I	Direct-IO modern
-t N	Number of threads (numberOfDrives * 16)
-F <>	list of files (the above command tests with 16 files per drive)

Recommended tools for MinIO subscriptions

Important

The tools noted in this section require a MinIO subscription. MinIO strongly recommends all production deployments use AIStor Object Store with their SUBNET license. For more information, see the MinIO AIStor pricing page.

1. Health diagnostic tool

   Generate a summary of the health status of your deployment. If you have access to SUBNET <minio-docs-subnet>, you can upload the results there.

   mc support diag ALIAS --airgap

   Replace ALIAS with the ~mc alias defined for the deployment.

2. Network test

   Run a network throughput test on a cluster with alias minio1.

   mc support perf net minio1

3. Drive test

   Run drive read/write performance measurements on all drive on all nodes for a cluster with alias minio1. The command uses the default blocksize of 4MiB.

   mc support perf drive minio1

4. Object test

   Measure the performance of S3 read/write of an object on the alias minio1. MinIO autotunes concurrency to obtain maximum throughput and IOPS (Input/Output Per Second).

   mc support perf object minio1