# Milvus Distributed

> Milvus Distributed is the cluster mode of the scalable open-source vector database for AI embeddings search, supporting HNSW, IVF, and NGT indexes in high-availability distributed setups. It provides GPU support, billion-scale capacity, real-time upsert/query capabilities, and multi-modal vector handling. Suited for RAG, recommendations, and image/video search at enterprise scale. Self-hosted unlike Pinecone's managed offering, and more ANN-centric than Weaviate.

- **URL:** https://milvus.io/
- **Category:** Scalable Distributed Vector DBs
- **Tags:** Scalable, Production Ready, Distributed, Cluster, Sharding, High Availability, Distributed Cluster, High Availability, Etcd, Distributed Vector DB, Gpu Support, Billion Scale, Open Source Scale
- **Updated:** 2026-04-28 11:38
- **Canonical page:** https://vectordb.ever.works/th/items/milvus-distributed

## Details

## Overview

Milvus Distributed is the production-ready cluster mode of the open-source Milvus vector database, built for massive scale GenAI and similarity search workloads.

## Scalability

- Sharding across query, data, and index nodes for horizontal scaling
- High QPS handling (thousands to tens of thousands queries/sec)
- Kubernetes Helm deployment with auto-scaling

## Key Features

- High Availability (HA) with leaderless replication and automatic failover
- Real-time data ingestion and dynamic updates
- Hybrid search combining vector similarity with scalar filtering
- Support for HNSW, IVF, PQ, SCANN indexes
- Comprehensive ops tools: CLI, Attu UI, backup/restore, sizing calculator

## Use Cases

- Enterprise RAG pipelines at scale
- Multimodal search (text, image, audio)
- Drug discovery and genomics similarity
- Real-time recommendation systems

## Comparisons

Vs Qdrant distributed: Milvus provides broader index algorithms, mature Kubernetes tooling, and larger ecosystem; Qdrant emphasizes Rust performance and simpler single-binary clustering for high-throughput distrib setups.

## Pricing

Free open-source (Apache 2.0). Managed via Zilliz Cloud with pay-as-you-go pricing.

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