Looking for a Smarter Alternative to Managed Storage Services?

As enterprises continue their march to the cloud, the shift to managed services—particularly for storage has become increasingly attractive. Cloud providers now offer a variety of fully managed file, block, and object storage solutions designed to simplify operations and scale with demand. But for all the convenience managed storage promises, it often comes at a steep price—both literally and figuratively. 

In this post, we’ll explore why SoftNAS, a virtual NAS solution from Buurst, delivers greater control, performance, flexibility, and cost-efficiency compared to fully managed storage offerings. Whether you’re an enterprise architect designing hybrid cloud architectures, or a cloud-native business optimizing for performance and cost, SoftNAS offers compelling advantages that managed models often can’t match. 

The Managed Storage Trade-Off: Convenience vs. Control

Managed storage services like Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP, Azure NetApp Files, Google Filestore, and Oracle FSS offer convenience. They abstract away the underlying infrastructure and provide simplified APIs or consoles for provisioning file shares or block volumes. That’s great—until you hit a wall. 

With managed services, you trade away control over key areas: 

• Limited configurability: Protocols, performance tuning, caching policies, and even HA configurations are fixed or heavily restricted. 
• Opaque performance: You often have little insight into how the backend behaves or how noisy neighbors impact your workloads. 
• Rigid pricing tiers: You’re often forced into capacity-based pricing, with limited options for tuning performance independently. 

SoftNAS puts that control back in your hands—without giving up enterprise-grade features. 

SoftNAS vs. Managed Storage: Key Differentiators 

Let’s break down where SoftNAS stands apart and why those differences matter. 

1. Deep Protocol Support – Beyond the Basics
   Most managed file services support NFS or SMB, but often not both—or not to the depth enterprises need. 

SoftNAS supports: 

• NFSv3 and NFSv4.1 for Unix/Linux workloads 
• CIFS/SMB with Active Directory integration for Windows environments 
• iSCSI block-level support for applications like clustered databases 
• Persistent Reservations (SCSI-3) for Oracle RAC and other clustered workloads 

This breadth and depth of support make SoftNAS ideal for complex application lift-and-shift scenarios where protocol fidelity is non-negotiable. 

By contrast, managed storage typically favors one protocol and limits advanced features like snapshot handling, AD permissions, or failover tuning. 

2. High Availability (HA) Built In
   SoftNAS includes asynchronous replication with automatic failover—a feature not commonly available in managed solutions without significant cost or architecture changes. 

For example: 

• Amazon FSx offers HA within a single Availability Zone unless you move up to expensive multi-AZ deployments. 
• Azure Files Premium supports ZRS (Zone Redundant Storage), but it’s asynchronous and may lag for write-heavy workloads. 
• Oracle FSS provides High Availability within a single Availability Domain by default; for cross-region or multi-AD resilience, customers must architect their own replication and failover strategies. 

With SoftNAS, you can: 

• Set up Active-Passive HA pairs across zones or regions 
• Configure RPO = 0 replication for mission-critical applications 
• Avoid vendor lock-in with portable replication policies 

This is especially powerful in industries like finance, healthcare, and manufacturing, where downtime and data loss are unacceptable. 

3. Tuned Performance with OpenZFS and NVMe Backing

SoftNAS is built on OpenZFS, giving it a performance and feature edge: 

• Copy-on-write snapshots and clones 
• Read/write caching (ARC/L2ARC) 
• End-to-end checksumming and self-healing data 
• Compression and deduplication options 

Managed services typically hide (or lack) these options entirely. You get fixed throughput tiers, no insight into cache behavior, and little recourse when performance dips. 

When deployed on NVMe-backed instances, SoftNAS can outperform managed offerings while still being cost-effective. 

4. True Multi-Cloud and Hybrid Cloud Flexibility
   Managed services are by definition tied to a specific cloud provider. Want to move data between AWS and Azure? You’ll pay for egress and navigate different APIs, permissions, and formats. 

With SoftNAS, the same virtual appliance: 

• Runs on AWS, Azure, Oracle Cloud, or VMware 
• Supports cloud-to-cloud and cloud-to-on-prem replication 
• Enables disaster recovery and migration strategies across platforms 

This makes SoftNAS the perfect fit for hybrid cloud architectures, regulated environments, and global operations that need to move workloads freely. 

5. BYOL and Cost Optimization for Budget-Conscious IT Teams
   Managed storage is typically priced based on provisioned or used capacity, often with required minimums or performance tiers. This leads to: 

• Over-provisioning to avoid performance throttling 
• High costs for temporary workloads 
• No control over storage efficiency (e.g., deduplication) 

SoftNAS uses a Bring Your Own License (BYOL) model and lets you: 

• Choose the instance type and underlying disks (HDD, SSD, NVMe) 
• Tune performance vs. cost based on your workload 
• Implement tiered storage (e.g., archive pools) using OpenZFS features 

Customers often report 30–50% cost savings compared to managed services for similar performance and features. 

Real-World Use Cases Where SoftNAS Shines

Let’s highlight a few scenarios where SoftNAS clearly outperforms managed storage: 

🏭 Manufacturing & Engineering 

CAD files, simulation data, and PLM systems often require SMB/NFS support, low latency, and replication across on-prem and cloud. SoftNAS enables this without compromising control or performance. 

🧬 Life Sciences 

Genomics and medical imaging workloads demand fast reads/writes and reliable DR. SoftNAS can be tuned for throughput and replicated securely between regions or clouds. 

🎥 Media & Entertainment 

Streaming, editing, and archiving require high-performance file access over NFS/SMB and the ability to scale rapidly. SoftNAS with NVMe and ZFS caching provides the needed performance. 

🏦 Finance & Insurance 

iSCSI and clustered app support (e.g., Oracle RAC) are often non-negotiable. SoftNAS uniquely enables clustered, block-level access with failover—something managed file services rarely support. 

🔐 Security and Enterprise Readiness 

While managed services do provide strong baseline security, SoftNAS lets enterprises go further: 

• Full encryption at rest and in transit 
• Private subnets, custom firewall rules, and IAM integration 
• No shared tenancy – your storage, your instance, your rules 

This level of isolation and configurability is essential for compliance-heavy industries. 

Conclusion: Why Choose SoftNAS Over Managed Storage? 

Managed storage solutions are great for basic needs and teams seeking hands-off convenience. But for enterprises that care about control, performance, protocol depth, cost optimization, and multi-cloud flexibility, they often fall short. 

SoftNAS brings: 

• True enterprise NAS capabilities to the cloud 
• Advanced HA and DR features with synchronous replication 
• Unmatched flexibility across AWS, Azure, Oracle Cloud, and VMware 
• Performance-tuning tools from OpenZFS and customizable infrastructure 
• A licensing model that rewards efficiency, not over-provisioning 

In short: SoftNAS puts you in control—without sacrificing the scalability and agility the cloud promises. 

Ready to explore SoftNAS? 

Deploy from your preferred cloud marketplace or contact us to discuss a tailored architecture that meets your specific needs—across protocols, platforms, and performance goals.