Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Minio VS Unraid

Compare Minio VS Unraid and see what are their differences

Minio logo Minio

Minio is an open-source minimal cloud storage server.

Unraid logo Unraid

Simplicity. Flexibility. Scalability. Modularity. Unraid empowers you to build the system you’ve always wanted using your preferred hardware, software, and operating systems.
  • Minio Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-09-25
  • Unraid Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-09-26

Minio features and specs

  • High Performance
    Minio is designed for high-performance object storage, providing fast read and write speeds and scalability for large-scale storage needs.
  • Open Source
    Being an open-source platform, Minio allows users to review, modify, and distribute its code, fostering transparency and collaboration within the community.
  • S3 Compatibility
    Minio offers S3 API compatibility, making it easier to integrate with existing applications and tools that are already designed to work with AWS S3.
  • Lightweight
    Minio is extremely lightweight and can be deployed on minimal hardware, making it an efficient option for edge computing and low-resource environments.
  • Multi-Cloud Support
    Minio supports a variety of cloud environments, allowing for flexibility and ease of data distribution across multiple cloud providers.
  • Strong Security
    Minio offers strong security features such as automatic encryption, Identity and Access Management (IAM), and compliance with enterprise-level security standards.

Possible disadvantages of Minio

  • Learning Curve
    For beginners, initial setup and configuration can be complex, requiring a certain level of technical expertise to deploy and manage effectively.
  • Limited Ecosystem
    Compared to AWS S3, Minio has a relatively smaller ecosystem of integrated tools and services, which could limit functionality or require additional development resources.
  • Community Support
    While there is a growing community around Minio, the support channels and community contributions are not as extensive as those for more established platforms like AWS.
  • Feature Parity
    Although Minio offers many similar features to AWS S3, there are still some advanced features and services in AWS that are not available in Minio.

Unraid features and specs

  • Ease of Use
    Unraid offers a user-friendly web-based GUI that makes system management straightforward, even for those without extensive technical knowledge.
  • Extensibility
    Supports a wide range of plugins and Docker containers, allowing users to customize and extend the functionality of their system easily.
  • Scalability
    Allows for easy addition of storage drives to expand capacity without the need for complex setups.
  • Data Protection
    Offers robust data protection through parity-based data redundancy, ensuring that data is not lost even if a drive fails.
  • Virtualization
    Supports running virtual machines, giving users the ability to run different operating systems and applications in isolated environments.
  • Resource Allocation
    Provides advanced options for CPU pinning and RAM allocation to optimize performance for specific applications or virtual machines.

Possible disadvantages of Unraid

  • Cost
    Unraid is not free; it requires a one-time purchase of a license, which can be a drawback for budget-conscious users.
  • Single Parity Drive Limitation
    Standard setups typically use a single parity drive, which may not be sufficient for very large arrays or mission-critical applications that require more robust redundancy.
  • Limited High-Performance Storage Options
    While Unraid supports SSDs, it is primarily designed for large capacity, slower spinning disks, potentially limiting high-performance storage setups.
  • Learning Curve for Advanced Features
    Though the basic setup is user-friendly, leveraging advanced features like Docker and virtual machines may require a steeper learning curve.
  • No Built-in Backup Solution
    Unraid does not come with a native backup solution; users must configure third-party tools for backup, adding complexity to the setup.

Analysis of Minio

Overall verdict

  • Minio is a strong choice for those looking for an efficient, scalable, and cost-effective object storage solution. Its compatibility with S3 APIs and ease of deployment make it a versatile option for many organizations.

Why this product is good

  • Minio is a high-performance, distributed object storage system that is designed to handle large-scale unstructured data. It is compatible with Amazon S3 APIs, making it a popular choice for those who want an open-source alternative to S3. Minio provides features such as scalability, security, and simplicity, and it supports a variety of deployment options including on-premises and cloud environments.

Recommended for

    Minio is recommended for developers, IT teams, and organizations that need a reliable object storage solution that can scale with their data needs. It is also a good choice for businesses looking to reduce costs associated with cloud storage services while maintaining high availability and performance.

Analysis of Unraid

Overall verdict

  • Unraid is a robust and versatile network-attached storage (NAS) solution that is highly regarded by both beginners and advanced users. Its flexibility in storage configuration and strong community support make it a good choice for many use cases.

Why this product is good

  • Unraid is appreciated for its flexible storage management, allowing users to mix and match drives of different sizes and types. It provides a user-friendly interface suitable for beginners, while also offering advanced features for experienced users. Unraid supports virtualization, making it possible to run multiple virtual machines on the same hardware, and has a strong community support system with numerous plugins and Docker container options available.

Recommended for

  • Home media servers
  • Small business data storage
  • Tech enthusiasts looking for customizable solutions
  • Users needing virtualization capabilities
  • People interested in maximizing storage capacity efficiently

Minio videos

This is MinIO

More videos:

  • Review - A Review of MinIO's Performance Benchmarks
  • Review - MinIO Hardware Considerations

Unraid videos

8 months on unRAID

More videos:

  • Review - unRaid - One Year Later - My Thoughts
  • Review - Freenas vs Unraid vs Openmediavault : Best Nas Software 2019

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Minio and Unraid)
Cloud Storage
79 79%
21% 21
Cloud Computing
70 70%
30% 30
Object Storage
100 100%
0% 0
Storage
0 0%
100% 100

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare Minio and Unraid

Minio Reviews

ReductStore vs. MinIO & InfluxDB on LTE Network: Who Really Wins the Speed Race?
Maintaining consistency between multiple databases, like MinIO and InfluxDB, adds a layer of complexity. In our setup, MinIO, used for blob storage, is linked to data points in InfluxDB via its filename. Any inconsistencies or mismatches between the two could potentially result in data loss. Furthermore, we need to query both databases, which is quite inefficient. Lastly,...
Performance comparison: ReductStore vs. Minio
We often use blob storage like S3, if we need to store data of different formats and sizes somewhere in the cloud or in our internal storage. Minio is an S3 compatible storage which you can run on your private cloud, bare-metal server or even on an edge device. You can also adapt it to keep historical data as a time series of blobs. The most straightforward solution would be...
Best & Cheapest Object Storage Providers With S-3 Support
MinIO supports many use cases for diverse settings and has been cloud-native from its inception. MinIO’s software-defined suite operates in public and private clouds smoothly at the edge and positions itself as a leader in hybrid cloud object storage.
Source: macpost.net
What are the alternatives to S3?
Zenko is an open source multi-cloud controller allowing users to be in control of data while leveraging the efficiency of private and public clouds. Zenko stores information locally and to Amazon S3, Azure Blob storage, Google Cloud Storage, or any S3-compatible cloud storage platform (Ceph, Minio, and more). Zenko, as described on the official website, is not a data mover,...
Source: www.w6d.io
Ceph Storage Platform Alternatives in 2022
MinIO leverages the hard won knowledge of the web scalers to bring a simple scaling model to object storage. At MinIO, scaling starts with a single cluster which can be federated with other MinIO clusters to create a global namespace, spanning multiple data centers if needed. It is one of the reasons that more than half the Fortune 500 runs MinIO.

Unraid Reviews

9 Of The Best FreeNAS Alternatives For Your Storage Needs
You can use the free 30-day trial version to see if Unraid is suitable for your hardware. You will experience full functionality in the trial version without any storage device limit. However, you will require an internet connection for the trial versions.
Top 7 FreeNas Alternative For Your PC
unRaid is software made to transform any computer into a NAS server. An easy to use processor clocked at 1GHz with 512MB RAM does all the tricks. In simple terms, the motherboard must provide the possibility to boot on a USB key. It doesn’t need installing disks of the same capacity. Hence, you can try the free sector repair solution if your disk isn’t working.
Top 15 Best TrueNAS Alternatives In 2022
Network-attached storage systems, UnRAID application servers, and UnRAID virtualization hosts make up the bulk of UnRAID’s offerings.

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Minio seems to be a lot more popular than Unraid. While we know about 167 links to Minio, we've tracked only 13 mentions of Unraid. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Minio mentions (167)

  • OpenBSD Upgrade 7.6 to 7.7
    In addition, it also includes MariaDB update where "Binary logs are no longer purged by default unless a replica has connected", and minio update where "the MinIO Gateway and the related filesystem mode code have been removed". - Source: dev.to / about 1 month ago
  • Hosting Services – The Short and Mid-Term Solution Before Transition to the Public Cloud
    Consume object storage – a hosting provider can deploy and maintain object storage services (such as Min.io), offering his customers to begin consuming storage capabilities that exist in cloud-native environments. - Source: dev.to / 3 months ago
  • When using an S3-compatible Object Storage, be cautious when upgrading **SDK for Java 2.x** to version **2.30.0 or later**
    Based on a rough check using o1 pro mode & Deep Search, MinIO supports it, but other storages do not. - Source: dev.to / 4 months ago
  • Gitlab names Bill Staples as new CEO
    You don't happen to work at Minio do you? Because apparently Minio is for AI these days: https://min.io/. - Source: Hacker News / 6 months ago
  • Minio integration with nestjs | file upload & retrieve
    What is minio? Minio is *free, open-source, scalable S3 compatible object storage. - Source: dev.to / 6 months ago
View more

Unraid mentions (13)

  • what are your digital decluttering routines?
    Really: I've got a Synology 10-disk unit in JBOD mode (each drive independent, but see SnapRaid) containing backup of backups and recent set of 4x 14TB unopened drives. I'm working at building a new UnRaid system to contain everything; I just need to confirm the power supply max load and if I can stagger the drives to avoid the maximum inrush. RAID5 is great (but Is Not A Backup), UnRaid is a "daily" RAID5... Source: over 2 years ago
  • Build upgrade - OS advice
    As an example, I have qemu+kvm host running my VMs (NAS, plex, Nextcloud etc.). As for NAS OS, TrueNAS is a great options. With different drive size you can consider UnRAID. It allows to pool drives of a different size. https://unraid.net/product. Source: over 2 years ago
  • my first NAS. need some input on what to buy. synology?
    You can turn a PC case into a NAS with NAS OS like openmediavault (https://www.openmediavault.org/), unraid (https://unraid.net/product), or TrueNAS Core (https://www.truenas.com/docs/core/gettingstarted/corehardwareguide/). They require +8 GB RAM (Unraid system requirements say 4 and OMV is ok with +1GB RAM). To start, I'd go with openmediavault. If you need it to be windows, say, using for anything else, you can... Source: almost 3 years ago
  • Low cost storage server - is there a need?
    Take a look at using unraid as a backup server. https://unraid.net/product. Source: about 3 years ago
  • Homelab iSCSI Resizable Storage
    In case you are interested in software options. UnRAID is a nice option. Https://unraid.net/product. Source: about 3 years ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Minio and Unraid, you can also consider the following products

Ceph - Ceph is a distributed object store and file system designed to provide excellent performance...

OpenMediaVault - OpenMediaVault is the next generation network attached storage (NAS) solution based on Debian Linux.

Google Cloud Storage - Google Cloud Storage offers developers and IT organizations durable and highly available object storage.

TrueNAS Core - TrueNAS Core (formerly FreeNAS) is a storage operating system strong and robust enough to meet the needs of enterprise level businesses.

Amazon S3 - Amazon S3 is an object storage where users can store data from their business on a safe, cloud-based platform. Amazon S3 operates in 54 availability zones within 18 graphic regions and 1 local region.

XigmaNAS - File Sharing, OS & Utilities, and Security & Privacy