Deploy Silo on Windows

This page documents deploying Silo onto Microsoft Windows hosts for development and evaluation.

Silo publishes Windows archives for x86-64 and ARM64. The current project CI runs on Linux and does not provide Windows runtime coverage, so the old upstream list of “officially supported” Windows releases has been removed. Validate the exact Windows edition, filesystem, service wrapper, and workload before relying on it in production.

The procedure includes guidance for deploying Single-Node Multi-Drive (SNMD) and Single-Node Single-Drive (SNSD) topologies in support of early development and evaluation environments.

This guide does not validate Multi-Node Multi-Drive (MNMD) distributed configurations on Windows hosts.

Considerations

Review Checklists

Ensure you have reviewed our published Hardware, Software, and Security checklists before attempting this procedure.

Erasure Coding Parity

MinIO automatically determines the default erasure coding configuration for the cluster based on the total number of nodes and drives in the topology. You can configure the per-object parity setting when you set up the cluster or let MinIO select the default (EC:4 for production-grade clusters).

Parity controls the relationship between object availability and storage on disk. Use the MinIO Erasure Code Calculator for guidance in selecting the appropriate erasure code parity level for your cluster.

While you can change erasure parity settings at any time, objects written with a given parity do not automatically update to the new parity settings.

Procedure

1. Download the Silo Binary

Download the Windows archive for your architecture from Download & Install, verify it against the checksum published with the same release, and extract minio.exe.

The next step includes instructions for running the executable. Launch the server from PowerShell or the Command Prompt rather than by double-clicking it in Explorer.

2. Launch the MinIO Server

In PowerShell or the Command Prompt, navigate to the location of the executable or add the path of the minio.exe file to the system $PATH. computer.

For Windows hosts with multiple drives, you can specify a sequential set of drives to use for configuring MinIO in the Single-Node Multi-Drive (SNMD) topology:

.\minio.exe server {D...G}:\minio --console-address :9001

The minio server process prints its output to the system console, similar to the following:

API: http://192.0.2.10:9000  http://127.0.0.1:9000
RootUser: minioadmin
RootPass: minioadmin

Console: http://192.0.2.10:9001 http://127.0.0.1:9001
RootUser: minioadmin
RootPass: minioadmin

Command-line: https://silo.pgsty.com/reference/minio-mc/
   $ mc alias set myminio http://192.0.2.10:9000 minioadmin minioadmin

Documentation: https://silo.pgsty.com/docs/

WARNING: Detected default credentials 'minioadmin:minioadmin', we recommend that you change these values with 'MINIO_ROOT_USER' and 'MINIO_ROOT_PASSWORD' environment variables.

The process is tied to the current PowerShell or Command Prompt window. Closing the window stops the server and ends the process.

Use this command to start a local MinIO instance in the C:\minio folder. You can replace C:\minio with another drive or folder path on the local

.\minio.exe server C:\minio --console-address :9001

The minio server process prints its output to the system console, similar to the following:

API: http://192.0.2.10:9000  http://127.0.0.1:9000
RootUser: minioadmin
RootPass: minioadmin

Console: http://192.0.2.10:9001 http://127.0.0.1:9001
RootUser: minioadmin
RootPass: minioadmin

Command-line: https://silo.pgsty.com/reference/minio-mc/
   $ mc alias set myminio http://192.0.2.10:9000 minioadmin minioadmin

Documentation: https://silo.pgsty.com/docs/

WARNING: Detected default credentials 'minioadmin:minioadmin', we recommend that you change these values with 'MINIO_ROOT_USER' and 'MINIO_ROOT_PASSWORD' environment variables.

The process is tied to the current PowerShell or Command Prompt window. Closing the window stops the server and ends the process.

3. Connect your Browser to the MinIO Server

Access the MinIO Console by going to a browser (such as Microsoft Edge) and going to http://127.0.0.1:9001 or one of the Console addresses specified in the minio server command’s output. For example, Console: http://192.0.2.10:9001 http://127.0.0.1:9001 in the example output indicates two possible addresses to use for connecting to the Console.

While port 9000 is used for connecting to the API, MinIO automatically redirects browser access to the MinIO Console.

Log in to the Console with the RootUser and RootPass user credentials displayed in the output. These default to minioadmin | minioadmin.

You can use the MinIO Console for general administration tasks like Identity and Access Management, Metrics and Log Monitoring, or Server Configuration. Each MinIO server includes its own embedded MinIO Console.

MinIO Console displaying bucket start screen

For more information, see the MinIO Console documentation.

4. (Optional) Install the Silo Client

The Silo client allows you to work with the deployment from PowerShell.

Download the Windows client archive from Download & Install, verify its checksum, and extract mcli.exe.

Run it from the Command Prompt or PowerShell:

\path\to\mcli.exe --help

Use mc alias set through the installed mcli.exe command to authenticate and connect to the deployment.

mcli.exe alias set local http://127.0.0.1:9000 minioadmin minioadmin
mcli.exe admin info local

The mc alias set command takes four arguments:

The name of the alias
The hostname or IP address and port of the MinIO server
The Access Key for a MinIO user
The Secret Key for a MinIO user

For additional details about this command, see mc alias set.

5. Next Steps

Enable TLS before exposing the service beyond a trusted development network.
Replace the example credentials and create least-privilege users through Identity and Access Management.
Configure monitoring and alerting before relying on the deployment for persistent data.