Garage is indeed an excellent project, but I think it has a few drawbacks compared to the alternatives: Metadata Backend: It relies on SQLite. I have concerns about how well this scales or handles high concurrency with massive datasets. Admin UI: The console is still not very user-friendly/polished. Deployment Complexity: You are required to configure a "layout" (regions/zones) to get started, whereas MinIO doesn't force this concept on you for simple setups. Design Philosophy: While Garage is fantastic for edge/geo-distributed use cases, I feel its overall design still lags behind MinIO and RustFS. There is a higher barrier to entry because you have to learn specific Garage concepts just to get it running.
It uses LMDB by default, but CAN use SQLite as an alternative [1]. LMDB is already used by OpenLDAP [2][3] and seems pretty bullet-proof.
[1] https://garagehq.deuxfleurs.fr/documentation/cookbook/real-w... [2] https://www.symas.com/mdb [3] https://www.openldap.org/