The Blog Year in Review: Top 10 for 2022

This week is always one of reflection. With new outlets pushing their predictions traffic into October and November, we find ourselves taking this week to look back on what we wrote, and more importantly, what our readers read.

We had a bang up year on the blog front. We increased pageviews year over year by 80% and increased readers by 58%. We had multiple appearances on the front page of HackerNews and as most readers know, that drives a ton of traffic.

Here is a quick run down of the top ten posts of 2022 starting with #10 and working our way up to #1.

#10 - NVMe Benchmark

It feels fitting to have one of our first posts in 2022 come in at #10. We refreshed our NVMe benchmark to start the year and blew the doors off our existing world record - pushing GET performance up by 78% and total throughput by 86%. This was a HN Front Pager.

#9 - A Billion Docker Pulls!

This post marked an amazing milestone for us and Garima Kapoor detailed what it means for us and the industry at large. Change is already here and more is coming. A billion Docker pulls is just the evidence. This was also a HN Front Pager.

#8 - Small File Performance

MinIO prides itself on its small file performance and we consider ourselves to be among the very best in this regard. Klaus Post is generally considered to be one of the most knowledgeable small files practitioners on the planet.

#7 - MinIO Versioning, Metadata and Storage Deep Dive

Klaus Post(s) up again in the top ten with a deep dive on versioning and metadata. This masterclass on these critical capabilities was referenced all year long - which given it came out on the 3rd of January, was, well, all year.

#6 - Grafana Loki

Matt Sarrel will be on this list a few times. Here he teams with Cesar Celis Hernandez to expand upon the foundational Grafana Loki post this time teaching you how to deploy Loki and MinIO using Docker containers, followed by instructions on how to install from source.

#5 - Lakehouse Architectures with Apache Iceberg

Matt is back at it again, this time collaborating with Raghav Karnam on the definitive guide to building a modern data lakehouse with Apache Iceberg. Google recognizes its cred, it shows up at #1 in searches for “lakehouse iceberg”.

#4 - Snowflake External Tables and MinIO

This was the year that databases pivoted heavily in the direction of modern object storage, moving away from legacy SAN/NAS appliances. Satish Ramakrishnan chronicled the move through the Snowflake announcement of external tables. Now you can query data anywhere - and guess what, since MinIO runs anywhere, we benefit disproportionately.  

#3 - SQL Server

That theme from #4? It is the same for #3. This time, however, the ubiquitous SQL Server makes object storage the apple of its eye and partners with MinIO as a design partner. Rumor has it MinIO was the object storage benchmark during the development of this much anticipated feature. Moiz Kohari covers everything you need to know.

#2 - Deprecating the MinIO Gateway

One of MinIO’s contributions to the growth of S3 was its gateway. This enabled legacy technologies to speak S3 when they weren’t able to. If you have a legacy SAN/NAS provider claiming S3 API support - a quick look under the covers would reveal MinIO. The time to let go came and thus we deprecated the MinIO Gateway. Harshavardhana broke it down as only he can.

#1 - Nutanix Open Source Violation

Garima Kapoor detailed Nutanix’s violation of MinIO’s Open Source license on our blog for documentation reasons. Gaul posted it over on HackerNews and next thing you know it was #1. While Nutanix apologized, it doesn’t change the fact that the license to any MinIO code has been revoked and any customers running Nutanix Objects with MinIO inside are also in violation.
That’s the top ten. Given we had 105 (this makes 106), that’s pretty rare air. Having said that, there is a ton of really great content that didn’t make the list, perhaps because it has a narrow focus, a strong technical angle or could be more thought-leadership oriented. I can assure you it is all good :)

If you have an idea for something you would like to see - please let us know on the Slack channel, on Twitter or on LinkedIn. We are always keen to get your feedback.