MinIO S3 Compatible VPS Hosting

AWS S3 charges $0.023 per GB per month plus egress fees that quickly dominate the bill for any workload that serves files to end users. Backblaze B2 cuts that to $0.006 per GB but still meters egress. Wasabi flat rates at $6.99 per TB but enforces a 90 day minimum retention. MinIO on AnubizHost VPS costs flat monthly with no per GB or egress charge. For workloads above 500 GB or with heavy outbound traffic self hosted MinIO wins on cost within the first month.

API compatibility is 100 percent for the S3 operations most applications use - PUT, GET, DELETE, multipart upload, presigned URLs, bucket policies, server side encryption, and lifecycle rules. Drop in MinIO as the endpoint URL in your AWS SDK and existing code keeps working. Region pinning, versioning, object locking, and replication are all supported in the open source build.

Start with a 4 vCPU 8 GB RAM VPS with at least 500 GB NVMe. Install Docker, pull the official minio image, and launch with environment variables for root user and password. Behind Caddy or Nginx terminate TLS and proxy port 9000 for the S3 API and port 9001 for the web console. Use mc, the MinIO client, to create buckets, set policies, and test uploads. The whole setup runs in under 10 minutes.

For production workloads enable server side encryption with KES, set up Prometheus monitoring on the built in metrics endpoint, and configure lifecycle rules to expire old versions. Backups go to a second VPS or to a remote S3 endpoint via mc mirror running on a cron schedule. Distributed mode across 4 to 16 VPS adds erasure coding for hardware fault tolerance.

Hosting MinIO on AWS or Cloudflare R2 means the underlying provider can subpoena the data with a US warrant. Hosting on AnubizHost VPS in Romania, Iceland, or Finland puts the data outside Five Eyes intelligence sharing and under jurisdictions with strong privacy law. No DMCA forwarding, no proactive scanning, no AI training on your buckets.

Encrypt every bucket with server side encryption using customer managed keys. Combine with full disk encryption on the VPS itself and your object storage stays opaque even to AnubizHost staff. Pay in Monero for the strongest anonymity or Bitcoin if you prefer. No KYC, no real name, no card on file. Service runs as long as your crypto balance covers monthly renewal.