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

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

55 points by whispem 8 hours ago | 22 comments

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/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

▲ eatonphil 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Great educational project! I'm curious why you are using Raft and also 2PC unless you're sharding data and doing cross-shard transactions? Or is Raft only for cluster membership but 2PC is for replicating data? If that's the case it kind of seems like overkill but I'm not sure.

Few distributed filesystems/object stores seem to use Raft (or consensus at all) for replicating data because it's unnecessary overhead. Chain replication is one popular way for replicating data (which uses consensus to manage membership but the data path is outside of consensus).

▲ iryna_kondr 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Hi Emilie, nice project, thanks for sharing. I’m curious whether there were any decisions that you added mainly for educational value even though you wouldn’t make the same call in a production system?

▲ LunaSea 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Hello, cool project, did you think about maybe contributing to the key-value store feature of Garage, which is also a Rust project by open source development lab Deux Fleurs?

	▲	whispem an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Hello! Thank you for your message. I don’t know this project, do you have a GitHub link maybe?

▲ kunley 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Looks nice.

What is the memory consumption under a significant load? That seems to be as much important as the throughput & latency.

▲ _s_a_m_ 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I there an official docker image? I am looking for something more light-weighted than MinIO. What are the requirements?

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flakron 3 hours ago | parent [-]

Have you checked garage - https://garagehq.deuxfleurs.fr ? Not affiliated nor trying to overshadow the posted project

	▲	whispem 3 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Yes! I'll check as soon as possible

▲ frwickst 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Last posted 16 days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46661308

▲ whispem 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Yes, I know. I had the opportunity to request a review of my first post (which was flagged) following my email to the moderators of HN. After checking, the moderator told me to redo a post because indeed I was wrongly flagged by some people here.

▲ forgotpwd16 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

>All the code, architecture, logic, and design in minikv were written by me, 100% by hand.

Why people always lie with this? Especially in this case that they uploaded the entire log:

  Date:   Sat Dec 6 16:08:04 2025 +0100
      Add hashing utilities and consistent hash ring
  Date:   Sat Dec 6 16:07:24 2025 +0100
      Create mod.rs for common utilities in minikv
  Date:   Sat Dec 6 16:07:03 2025 +0100
      Add configuration structures for minikv components
  Date:   Sat Dec 6 16:06:26 2025 +0100
      Add error types and conversion methods for minikv
  Date:   Sat Dec 6 16:05:45 2025 +0100
      Add main module for minikv key-value store

And this goes on until project is complete (which probably took 2~3h total if sum all sessions). Doubt learned anything at all. Well, other than that LLMs can solo complete simple projects.

Comments in previous submission are also obviously AI generated. No wonder was flagged.

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kryptiskt 13 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

It looks like that if you want logically separated commits from a chunk of programming you have done. Stage a file or a hunk or two, write commit message, commit, rinse and repeat.

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yes_man 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

You have never split your working tree changes into separate commits?

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forgotpwd16 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Irrelevant question. In README has:

>Built in public as a learning-by-doing project

So, either the entire project was already written and being uploaded one file at the time (first modification since lowest commit mentioned is README update: https://github.com/whispem/minikv/commit/6fa48be1187f596dde8..., clearly AI generated and clearly AI used has codebase/architecture knowledge), and this claim is false, or they're implementing a new component every 30s.

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whispem an hour ago | parent | next [-]

I had the opportunity to request a review of my first post (which was flagged) following my email to the moderators of HN. I didn’t use AI for the codebase, only for .md files & there's no problem with that. My project was reviewed by moderators, don't worry. If the codebase or architecture was AI generated this post would not have been authorized and therefore it would not have been published.

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skylurk an hour ago | parent | next [-]

How does this deleted fix_everything.sh fit in to your story?

https://github.com/whispem/minikv/commit/6e01d29365f345283ec...

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whispem 31 minutes ago | parent [-]

I don't see the problem to be honest

	▲	skylurk 11 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Hmm. You doth protest too much, methinks :)

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rollulus an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

I thought that your “background in literature” contributed to the “well-written docs”, but that was LLMs!

	▲	whispem 29 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		No, I was helped (.md files only) by AI to rewrite but the majority of the doc is written by myself, I just asked for help from the AI for formatting for example.

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johnbellone an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

I am not going to pretend to know what this person did, but I've definitely modified many things at once and made distinct commits after the fact (within 30s). I do not find it that abnormal.

	▲	whispem an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Thanks a lot! I make distinct commits "every 30s" because I'm focused and I test my project. If the CI is green, I don't touch of anything. If not, I work on the project until the CI is fully green.