Infrastructure Update: Why We Replaced MinIO — and What We Built Instead

MinIO, the open-source object storage platform that powered your VPS backups, was officially discontinued and archived on April 25, 2026. We’ve already built and deployed its replacement. Here is what that means for you.

A Little History

Your VPS backups have relied on object storage for years. Object storage holds your backup files in a reliable, redundant way. Think of it like a highly organized warehouse with multiple copies of everything, designed so that nothing gets lost even if hardware fails.

• Early days: We ran OpenStack Swift, an open-source system that was solid but aging. As our infrastructure grew, it became harder to scale and maintain.
• The MinIO era: We migrated to MinIO, a faster, simpler alternative widely adopted across the industry. It served your backups well for years.
• April 25, 2026: MinIO’s GitHub repository was archived and made read-only. The project is no longer maintained. Running unmaintained software for critical backup infrastructure is a risk we will not take.
• Today: We have deployed s3-workerman, our own replacement built specifically for InterServer infrastructure and your backups.

What Is s3-workerman?

s3-workerman is an S3-compatible object storage server we built in-house using Workerman. Workerman is a high-performance, event-driven framework that efficiently handles thousands of simultaneous connections without the overhead of traditional web servers.

The “S3-compatible” part is crucial. Your backup tools already know how to talk to S3. Because s3-workerman uses the exact same protocol, your backups continue working without any configuration changes on your end.

What this means for you: Nothing changes from your perspective. Your backups still run, still retain for 45 days, and still restore the exact same way. The engine under the hood changed, but the experience did not.

Built on Lessons from DirectAdmin Storage

This isn’t our first time building storage systems. We previously developed an api layer for DirectAdmin Storage set up using workerman. That work gave us a solid foundation for handling replication, failover, data integrity checks, and the edge cases that only show up in real-world production environments.

s3-workerman inherits all of that experience. Rather than patching someone else’s abandoned code, we built a system we fully understand and control.

What Happens to the Old MinIO Data?

Your existing backups on the old MinIO system aren’t going anywhere yet. Here is the practical reality of the transition:

• VPS backups have a 45-day retention period.
• The oldest backup currently in the system was created 45 days ago.
• Within 45 days of the cutover, every backup in the old system will naturally expire.
• We will keep the old system running through that window, then shut it down cleanly.

The new system doesn’t read data written by MinIO because the storage formats are different. However, thanks to the 45-day overlap window, there is no gap in your protection. New backups will move towards the new system over the next few months, while old backups remain accessible on MinIO until they age out.

No data loss, no interruption. You have continuous backup coverage through the entire transition.

Why Not Just Use Another Existing Product?

It is a fair question. The landscape of open-source S3-compatible storage has become complicated:

• MinIO is now archived and unmaintained.
• Ceph is powerful but would require significant rework
• Most alternatives require cloud-vendor lock-in or carry massive licensing costs.

We’ve been running web hosting infrastructure since 1999. We know what production ready actually looks like, and we know the cost of depending on software we don’t control. Building our own solution means we can fix bugs immediately, add features when our customers need them.

Technical Highlights

• Multi-node replication: Your backups are stored on multiple physical servers simultaneously. If one server has a hardware problem, your data is safe on the others. The system continuously verifies copies and automatically repairs any discrepancies.
• Proxy Node: For VPS customers hosted in Los Angeles, uploads now go to a local relay node first. This is much faster than sending data cross-country to New Jersey. The relay handles the slower long-distance transfer to our East Coast storage nodes automatically in the background.
• Automatic lifecycle management: The 45-day backup retention isn’t manually managed. The system automatically expires old backups and reclaims storage space, with safeguards to ensure copies are fully replicated before anything is deleted.
• Data integrity checks: Every backup file is checksummed when written. A background verification process continuously ensures every copy on every server matches the original. Corruption is caught and repaired automatically.

Will This Be Released as Open Source?

We are considering it. Our philosophy has always leaned toward contributing back to the community, and s3-workerman is built cleanly enough that an open-source release is realistic. If and when that happens, we will announce it here.

In the meantime, your backups are running on it right now, in production—which is the most honest form of quality testing there is.

Questions?

If you have questions about your backups, the migration, or how any of this affects your specific account, our support team is available 24/7. Open a ticket or reach us through live chat. We’re happy to walk through the specifics with you.