Data Infrastructure & Integration

Milvus builds on open data infrastructure for its core dependencies. This chapter covers the components you can plug in and configure:

• Metadata — Milvus stores metadata (collection schemas, node status, consumption checkpoints) in etcd.
• Object Storage — Milvus stores index files and binary logs in MinIO, AWS S3, or other S3-compatible / cloud object storage.
• Message Queue — Milvus uses a write-ahead log (WAL): Woodpecker (default), Pulsar, Kafka, or RocksMQ.

By default, a new Milvus 3.x deployment runs with Woodpecker as the message queue, etcd for metadata, and MinIO for object storage — no extra messaging infrastructure required.