Software checklist

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

MinIO recommends a Linux kernel version of 6.8 or later for all new deployments to access critical performance features. Older 4.x and 5.x kernels run MinIO AIStor and remain supported, but modern workloads and high-performance NVMe drives demand newer kernels to operate at peak efficiency.

The following distributions ship with a recommended kernel version by default:

Distribution	Default Kernel
Ubuntu 24.04 LTS	6.8
RHEL 10	6.12
Rocky Linux 10	6.12
AlmaLinux 10	6.12
Oracle Linux 10	6.12
SUSE Linux 15 SP7	6.4

See recommended distributions for additional details, or the operating system compatibility matrix for the full supported range, including older RHEL and Ubuntu releases.

A deployment using RDMA acceleration needs the RDMA subsystem enabled in the kernel and these runtime libraries, which the RDMA package pulls in as dependencies:

Format	Packages
DEB	`libibverbs1`, `librdmacm1`, `libnuma1`
RPM	`libibverbs`, `rdma-core`, `numactl-libs`

Filesystem

Drives must be formatted with the XFS filesystem. MinIO AIStor requires XFS for best performance and consistency guarantees.

Unsupported filesystems

Do not use ext4. ext4 does not honor POSIX O_DIRECT/Fdatasync semantics and trades performance for consistency.
Do not use NFS volumes for distributed deployments. NFS is not strictly consistent. If you must use NFS in a distributed setup, use NFSv4 instead of NFSv3 for relatively better outcomes.
NFS can be safely used with single drive mode deployments.

See storage requirements for drive formatting and mount guidance.

Time synchronization

All servers in a distributed deployment must have clocks synchronized to within 15 minutes of each other. Use ntp, timedatectl, or timesyncd to synchronize time across nodes.

Check your operating system’s documentation for how to configure time synchronization.

System services

Disable or uninstall system services that index, scan, or audit the filesystem, system-level calls, or kernel-level calls. These services reduce performance due to resource contention or interception of MinIO AIStor operations.

MinIO strongly recommends disabling the following services on hosts running MinIO AIStor:

mlocate or plocate
updatedb
auditd
Antivirus software (clamav)

The above list represents the most common services known to cause performance or behavioral issues with high performance systems like MinIO AIStor. Consider removing or disabling any other service or software that functions similarly.

Alternatively, configure these services to ignore or exclude the MinIO AIStor process and all drives or drive paths accessed by MinIO AIStor.

Infrastructure and access

Requirement	Details
System administrator access	Root or sudo access to all remote servers in the deployment
Management tool	A distributed systems tool such as Ansible, Terraform, or Kubernetes. Kubernetes deployments should use the MinIO AIStor Operator.
Load balancer	A load balancer to handle routing of requests, such as NGINX
Monitoring	Prometheus or a Prometheus-compatible setup for metrics collection
Dashboard	Grafana or a similar Prometheus-compatible visual dashboard
CLI	`mc` installed on the local host system for command line management and support diagnostics

Release notes and artifacts

Review the MinIO AIStor Release Notes before installing or upgrading. The release notes document changes, bug fixes, security updates, and any backwards-incompatible changes between versions.

Each release also publishes Software Bill of Materials (SBOM) files in CycloneDX and SPDX formats, along with a complete Go modules dependency list. Organizations that require supply chain transparency or vulnerability scanning can use these artifacts as part of their pre-deployment review.

See Release Artifacts for download links, feed subscriptions, and API access.

MinIO AIStor install

Install a matching version of MinIO AIStor across all nodes in the deployment.

Post-install tasks

Task	Details
Create CLI aliases	Create an `mc alias` for each server with `mc alias set` for command line access from a local machine
Bucket replication	Configure bucket replication to preserve a copy of bucket contents to another location
Site replication	Configure site replication to synchronize contents across multiple dispersed data center locations
Lifecycle management	Configure object retention rules to manage when objects expire
Tiering	Configure object tiering to move objects to warm or cold storage locations for cost efficiency

3rd party identity provider tasks

Task	Details
Security Token Service	Authenticate to MinIO AIStor with STS. Enabling STS requires MinIO support through SUBNET.