Milvus is a high-performance vector database designed for large-scale unstructured data processing. Developed in Go and C++, it supports CPU/GPU hardware acceleration to achieve first-class vector search performance. Its distributed architecture enables horizontal scaling to handle search queries across billions of vectors.
Milvus provides comprehensive enterprise-grade features: supporting multiple vector index types (such as HNSW, IVF, FLAT, etc.) for efficient vector search; optimizing cost and performance through multi-tenancy and hot/cold storage strategies; supporting full-text and hybrid search for simultaneous processing of sparse and dense vectors; offering robust data security mechanisms including user authentication, TLS encryption, and role-based access control.
The Milvus open-source project is part of the LF AI & Data Foundation and is distributed under the Apache 2.0 license. It supports standalone deployment mode and offers a lightweight version, Milvus Lite, for quick start use. For enterprise users, a fully managed service is available on Zilliz Cloud.
