Consider these 5 storage-as-a-service questions before buying

1. Should I lease a service or buy?

Many IT buyers are familiar with leasing, which enables customers to use storage without having to own equipment that often needs replacing in three to five years. There are some similarities with buying storage as a service; however, there are key distinctions as well.

Leasing

• Leasing includes a fixed contract term.
• The vendor owns the infrastructure; there are provisions to return or buy the equipment at the end of the lease.
• The price is calculated based on the initial value of the infrastructure, the length of the lease and the infrastructure's anticipated value at the end of the lease.
• Leasing usually includes a fixed monthly payment.
• A lease may not include service-level agreements (SLAs) or service-level objectives (SLOs), which demand the vendor live up to performance and availability metrics. However, some providers may offer these services at an extra cost.
• Customers are usually required to handle management, monitoring, system updates, patches and support, just as they do for data center equipment that they purchase.

Buying

• Vendors require that the service is purchased for a fixed length of time, and the contract terms usually stipulate a minimum level of spending.
• The vendor owns the infrastructure.
• The price is calculated based on the value of the service the vendor provides.
• Hardware costs are based on a consumption model where the overall costs can increase if the customer uses more storage than initially estimated.
• Storage-as-a-service vendors typically provide SLAs or SLOs. Often, vendors are selling more than just storage capacity. Vendors offer various tiers of service wherein the overall capacity might be consistent from one tier to the next but the levels of performance or availability might differ.
• The vendor is usually required to handle management, monitoring, system updates, patches and support, especially if it is a managed service.

There is not always consistency from one vendor to the next, so it's important to ask the right storage-as-a-service questions before buying.

2. Am I buying products or buying outcomes?

Buying on-premises storage hardware or software requires the customer to become familiar with vendor brands, whether they are looking for block storage, file storage, object storage or unified systems. These vendor products are usually broken down into entry, midrange and high-end platforms as well, with various performance and scaling requirements. Doing proper homework, including proof-of-concept testing, helps the customer know what to expect when the system is delivered.

When buying services, however, the customer often buys outcomes. Instead of purchasing a specific vendor brand and model, the customer may choose service delivery levels. They include the following:

• Storage type -- block, file, object.
• Performance tier -- all-flash, HDD, hybrid.
• Capacity.
• Subscription term.

The vendor then determines what configuration and infrastructure best meet the customer's needs. The customer doesn't know the product brand and model unless it requests that information. The customer then manages the storage through the vendor's portal, rather than an interface designed for a specific storage system.

Know upfront who is responsible for what services. Responsibility for areas such as data protection, replication and migration may not be so obvious when buying primary storage services.

3. What kind of hardware am I getting?

If you purchase typical, on-premises storage hardware, then you can select the make and model of the hardware. When it comes to storage as a service, however, you generally have less control over the hardware selection process.

If you purchase storage as a service from a major hardware vendor, such as Dell or HPE, you undoubtedly receive hardware from that vendor. As an example, Dell Apex is based on Dell hardware. However, depending on which provider you choose, there is a good chance that the provider chooses the hardware device for you, based on the terms of the contract. You might not have the option of choosing a specific model, though some vendors do allow you to select your own hardware.

Smaller storage-as-a-service providers can be less predictable when it comes to hardware selection. Generally speaking, the provider selects the hardware on your behalf, and you can rest assured that the hardware delivers the capacity and performance outlined in your service contract. However, you might not know what brand of hardware you use until the hardware arrives.

4. Is there subscription or consumption pricing -- or both?

Subscription pricing is a familiar concept, but it's often combined with consumption pricing when buying storage-as-a-service capacity. The contract price and period for storage as a service could be thought of as being like a subscription. Like other subscription-based services, the contract stipulates a price, a base level of storage capacity and performance, and the length of time for which the contract terms are in effect.

Consumption pricing is billed on top of the subscription fee and is charged for excess capacity consumed beyond the base amount defined within the contract.

5. Is it a managed service?

Not all storage services are managed services. A managed service means the vendor is responsible for delivering, installing, integrating, testing, supporting and upgrading the storage system. On-premises storage as a service requires customers to do all or many of those functions themselves.

Storage as a service is occasionally sold as a managed service. Some vendors do provide monitoring and management services as part of the contract.

Other considerations

There are additional storage-as-a-service questions and considerations.

When replacing an on-premises SAN or NAS, there are other issues to look at besides just storage types and capacity. For instance, if you are adopting storage as a service, you need to know if the vendor provides direct connectivity to public clouds and management of data in the cloud. Some vendors, for example, offer both cloud storage and local storage that they manage using a common service and bill at the same rate through a single invoice. This gives an organization the flexibility to move data between the cloud and its data center on an as-needed basis.

Those who are considering adopting storage as a service also need to consider the network characteristics or requirements and whether they are included in the service. The network characteristics can directly impact the storage performance and availability.

While data protection and DR are often sold as standalone services, they are likely an add-on to primary storage services. As such, customers need to know if any protection is included in the service and who is responsible for backing up, archiving and migrating data. Most organizations probably already have a data backup system in place. Make sure that the existing backup infrastructure works with the storage-as-a-service hardware, even if the vendor is offering its own backups.

Brien Posey is a former 22-time Microsoft MVP and a commercial astronaut candidate. In his more than 30 years in IT, he has served as a lead network engineer for the U.S. Department of Defense and a network administrator for some of the largest insurance companies in America.

Dave Raffo is an IT analyst and journalist. He previously worked as senior analyst at The Futurum Group and Evaluator Group, covering integrated systems, software-defined storage, container storage, public cloud storage and as-a-service offerings. He also previously worked at TechTarget from 2007 to 2021 as executive news director and editorial director for its storage coverage.