The big cloud providers already offer everything you need, including storage. So, why complicate things, right?
At first glance, that sounds convincing. Hyperscalers like AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud offer massive service catalogs, global infrastructure, and a wide range of storage options. For many teams, they seem like a convenient one-stop shop.
But in practice, things aren’t nearly as straightforward.
While hyperscalers offer extensive storage capabilities, their multi-tier systems prioritize versatility over optimization. The result? Hidden costs and performance headaches that cloud-native teams can’t afford to ignore.
The claim that hyperscaler storage meets all cloud-native needs because of scale and functionality is a stubborn myth, one of many that still permeate the development landscape.
This post kicks off a blog series tackling these myths and misconceptions about specialized cloud storage and what a best-of-breed, interoperable approach to storage and infrastructure entails.
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Reading the fine print of hyperscaler storage
On the surface, hyperscaler storage looks comprehensive and capable. But dig a little deeper, and some underlying cracks start to show.
Premium performance isn’t the default
Hyperscalers can deliver high performance, but not without tradeoffs:
- They charge more. Premium tiers designed for workloads like analytics or streaming can cost five to eight times more than interoperable solutions.
- They prioritize themselves. When hyperscalers face high-performance demands (e.g., AI workloads competing for GPUs and storage bandwidth), they tend to prioritize their own data centers. Smaller teams might have to navigate opaque processes to request higher performance, and their access to advanced optimizations can be limited.
- They play favorites. File size adds yet another layer of difficulty. Many hyperscaler storage systems handle large files more efficiently than small ones because of I/O overhead. Hyperscalers may help their biggest customers fine-tune configurations, but most are left to troubleshoot bottlenecks on their own.
Juggling tiers (and hoping nothing gets dropped)
Hot, cool, and cold storage options may look flexible on paper, but they require separate access controls, replication rules, and performance tuning. Teams are left juggling interfaces like AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM), scripting policies, and managing tooling just to keep systems functional.
And the more storage types you manage, the greater the chance for human error. A misplaced lifecycle rule or a mistyped IAM permission can result in:
- Unexpected data unavailability
- Delayed retrievals
- Accidental deletions
When complexity undermines reliability
Keeping storage tied tightly to hyperscaler infrastructure may seem efficient—but it often results in brittle setups. Misaligned storage, compute, and access layers can lead to latency issues or even full-blown downtime.
Performance-sensitive applications like real-time analytics or video streaming suffer most. Even a small delay can ripple through the user experience and cause customer churn. To patch gaps, teams often layer on caches, fine-tuning, or quick fixes that only add technical debt.
Who has time to babysit storage?
Developers, DevOps, and site reliability engineers (SREs) are always racing to ship features, scale services, and maintain uptime. For cloud-native teams, optimizing storage isn’t usually at the top of anyone’s to-do list.
Let’s face it: proactively analyzing storage access patterns and configuring tiering rules takes time that cloud-native teams often don’t have. Many teams therefore operate reactively and address storage issues only after performance degrades or surprise bills arrive.
Support tickets don’t feel your pain
Finally, there’s support. Unless you’re a premium customer paying for top-tier service contracts, you’re often stuck with ticketing systems and community forums. That might suffice for routine issues, but when storage problems impact production workloads, waiting for responses through standard channels adds unnecessary stress and delays.
When one size doesn’t fit your cloud
Unlike hyperscaler storage that takes a one-size-fits-all approach, specialized cloud storage solutions directly tackle these challenges. Backblaze B2 is purpose-built to simplify storage for cloud-native teams:
- A single, high-performance tier gives you instant access to all your data, with no tier juggling or lifecycle policies.
- Predictable, transparent pricing means no unexpected fees or surprise retrieval charges.
- S3-compatible APIs simplify integration, allowing you to plug Backblaze B2 directly into your existing cloud-native stack.
For cloud-native teams who value speed, simplicity, and cost control, specialized storage isn’t a complication; it’s a simplification. You get the performance you need, without the complexity you don’t.
Stay tuned for the next post in this series where we tackle Myth #2: Storage isn’t a big enough problem to remediate. (Spoiler: It is.)
