In simple English
This tool lets you store and read billions of files on your own servers. It acts like a private version of Amazon S3, but works much faster for small files. You can run a complete storage server with a single command. It grows easily when you add more hard drives. The project is free to use and costs you only the hardware you run it on.
What it is
SeaweedFS is a distributed storage system written in Go (a programming language built by Google for fast network servers). It combines an object store, a POSIX (Portable Operating System Interface, a set of standards that make different operating systems behave the same) file system, and an Apache Iceberg table catalog into a single binary program.
What it is good for
Solo builders who need a fast, self-hosted object store or a local cache for cloud storage without the heavy setup complexity of other distributed storage systems.
- Starts a fully working S3-compatible server with one simple command.
- Handles millions of small files very quickly because it avoids slow disk seeks.
- Supports Apache Iceberg and Lance tables for data analytics directly on your files.
- Running a multi-node cluster requires careful networking and configuration.
- Consumes more memory and CPU if you run all services on a single machine.
- Debugging storage failures in production takes experience with distributed systems.
Amazon S3 or complex Ceph and HDFS clusters
Docker or PostgreSQL
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curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/seaweedfs/seaweedfs/master/install.sh | bash AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID=admin AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY=secret S3_BUCKET=my-bucket ./weed mini -dir=./data