Lakehouse Research Base

Sep 23, 2026 · Databases

Milvus 3.x: From Vector Database to Lake-Native AI Retrieval Engine

This article provides a comprehensive analysis of Milvus 3.x's evolution from a vector database to a Lake-Native retrieval engine, covering its architecture, External Collection for zero-copy indexing on data lakes, Storage V3, ANN indexes (HNSW, IVF, DiskANN), hybrid search, and production RAG architectures with performance tuning and troubleshooting guidance.