Getting Started with MinIO: Installation, Configuration, and Spring Boot Integration for Object Storage

This article introduces MinIO, an open‑source object storage suite written in Go, compatible with Amazon S3 and Azure APIs, and suitable for private cloud or gateway scenarios.

What is MinIO?

MinIO is a lightweight, high‑performance storage system that supports objects up to 5 TB and offers cloud‑native features such as containerization and Kubernetes orchestration.

Application Scenarios

It can be used as a private‑cloud object store or as a gateway layer that seamlessly connects to Amazon S3 or Microsoft Azure services.

Key Features

High performance: read/write speeds up to 55Gb/s and 35Gb/s on standard hardware.

Scalable: clusters can form federations with a global namespace across data centers.

Cloud‑native: containerized, Kubernetes‑orchestrated, multi‑tenant.

Amazon S3 compatible: supports S3 v2/v4 APIs, MinIO SDK, MinIO Client, AWS SDK and CLI.

SDK support: Go, Java, Python SDKs are provided.

Graphical UI for management.

Erasure coding and checksum for data integrity, tolerating up to half of the disks failing.

Installation of MinIO

The installation is demonstrated using Docker.

1. Pull the Docker image

docker pull minio/minio

2. Run the container

docker run -p 9000:9000 -p 9001:9001 --name minio -d --restart=always -e "MINIO_ACCESS_KEY=admin" -e "MINIO_SECRET_KEY=admin" -v /home/data:/data -v /home/config:/root/.minio minio/minio server --console-address ":9000" --address ":9001" /data

Explanation of the flags: -p 9000: port for the web console. -p 9001: port for the API (used by SDKs). MINIO_ACCESS_KEY and MINIO_SECRET_KEY: credentials for the console.

After starting the container, the web console is reachable at http://<i>ip</i>:9000/login, where a bucket (e.g., test) can be created and set to public.

Spring Boot Integration

MinIO can be accessed from a Spring Boot application via its Java SDK.

1. Add Maven dependency

<dependency>
    <groupId>io.minio</groupId>
    <artifactId>minio</artifactId>
    <version>8.2.1</version>
</dependency>

2. Configure connection in application.yml

minio:
  # access URL
  endpoint: http://192.168.47.148
  # API port
  port: 9001
  # credentials
  accessKey: HQGWFYLWGC6FVJ0CQFOG
  secretKey: pUGhAgQhZDxJaLmN3uz65YX7Bb3FyLdLglBvcCr1
  secure: false
  bucket-name: test
  image-size: 10485760
  file-size: 1073741824

3. Create an upload controller

/**
 * @author 公众号：码猿技术专栏
 */
@RequestMapping("/minio")
@RestController
public class MinioController {
    @Autowired
    private MinioService minioService;

    @PostMapping("/upload")
    public String uploadFile(MultipartFile file, String bucketName) {
        String fileType = FileTypeUtils.getFileType(file);
        if (fileType != null) {
            return minioService.putObject(file, bucketName, fileType);
        }
        return "Unsupported file format. Please verify and re‑upload!";
    }
}

Calling the /minio/upload endpoint returns a URL that can be opened directly in a browser. The uploaded file appears in the MinIO console, and a shareable link (valid for 7 days) can be generated.

Conclusion

Although MinIO is an open‑source project, it provides powerful features that make it suitable for small‑to‑medium projects as a free object‑storage or image‑hosting solution.