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S3-durable key-value storage with etcd v3 compatibility

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T4 – a versioned datastore with branching and time-travel (S3-backed)

by amakhov·Apr 12, 2026·7 points·2 comments
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AI Analysis

●●SolidBig BrainNiche Gem

Git-like branching for etcd-compatible KV stores backed by S3.

Strengths
  • •S3-backed WAL enables automatic state recovery without managed disks.
  • •Branching enables safe configuration experiments without cloning entire infrastructure stacks.
Weaknesses
  • •S3 locking for leader election may introduce latency versus native Raft.
  • •Adopting this over etcd requires trust in a newer, less battle-tested codebase.
Target Audience

Backend engineers, K8s administrators

Similar To

etcd · Dolt · Consul

Post Description

Hi HN,

I built t4, a datastore that stores its WAL and snapshots in S3.

Instead of traditional storage, it writes append-only segments to object storage and reconstructs state from checkpoints + WAL.

A side effect of this model is that the database becomes naturally versioned: - you can restore any past state - branch from any point (with copy-on-write) - replay history

I started this as an experiment to replace etcd in Kubernetes, but it’s evolving into a general-purpose versioned state store.

Curious what people think about: - using object storage as the primary persistence layer - whether branching/time-travel is actually useful in practice

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