February 3, 2026
Tiny KV, big drama
Show HN: Minikv – Distributed key-value and object store in Rust (Raft, S3 API)
Rust-built mini cloud locker sparks ‘overkill’ debate and Docker thirst
TLDR: Minikv’s new release adds search, atomic multi-key updates, and an S3-style storage option in a Rust-built learning project. The crowd cheers but battles over whether Raft plus two-phase commit is overkill, demands a Docker image, questions memory use, and side-eyes a recent re-post — classic HN energy.
Rust’s latest crowd-pleaser, minikv, just shipped v0.7.0 — a DIY “cloud locker” for keys and files that now does search-by-value, all-or-nothing multi-key updates, bulk import/export, and speaks the Amazon S3 lingo. It’s a learning project turned showpiece, promising speed and reliability with Raft (servers agree on a leader) and 2PC (everyone double-checks before saving).
The comments? A total vibe. The Docker diehards sprinted in first: “is there an official image?” and “lighter than MinIO please,” basically begging for a one-command launch. Performance hawks circled next, grilling memory use under real load — 50k ops/sec sounds cute, but what’s the RAM bill? The spiciest thread: architecture nerds poking the Raft + 2PC combo. One calls it “kind of overkill,” while others argue it’s fine if you’re splitting data across shards. Translation: do we need consensus therapy and double-confirm on every write, or is this a complicated way to store “hello world”? Meta drama popped in with the re-post police dropping a link, and a thoughtful ask about which choices were made for education versus production. The mood swings from “awesome teaching tool” to “ship the Docker, show the memory charts,” with memes about putting MinIO on a diet and “Raft for everything” energy.
Key Points
- •Minikv v0.7.0 adds secondary indexes, multi-key transactions, streaming/batch import-export, and a durable S3-backed object store.
- •The system provides strong consistency via Raft and 2PC, durability with WAL, and 256 virtual shards for scaling and rebalancing.
- •APIs include HTTP REST, S3-compatible endpoints (with TTL extensions), gRPC for internal communication, and WebSocket/SSE for real-time watch.
- •Security and multi-tenancy features include API keys (Argon2), JWT, RBAC, audit logging, per-tenant quotas, AES-256-GCM encryption at rest, and TLS.
- •Reported performance includes >50,000 writes/sec on a single in-memory node, sub-millisecond reads, and Prometheus-based observability.