For all the compelling cost and customization benefits that open source software promises, sometimes it’s easier just to hand the task off to someone else.

That’s the decision online learning platform provider Moonami, LLC made recently when it opted to move 10 terabytes of self-managed storage off of Amazon Web Services Elastic Block Store (EBS) and onto a managed service from cloud storage-as-a-service provider Zadara Storage Inc. the result has been a 50 percent savings in administration time and improved recovery times for anxious customers who have mistakenly deleted files.

Moonami provides a hosted service that schools, colleges and nonprofits can use to deliver online courses. It’s based on Moodle, which is a leading open source learning platform.

Founded in 2012 and bootstrapped to quick profitability, Moonami runs completely in the cloud. Until recently, it stored 10 terabytes worth of course material, documents and video on Amazon EBS and managed it with GlusterFS, an open source scalable network file system.

Response times are important to Moonami’s customers, and its two-person engineering staff was constantly fine-tuning Gluster to balance loads and achieve optimal performance. The software worked fine, but complexity was a problem. “You really have to know the ins and outs of Gluster. We were constantly going through forums and online documentation,” said Moonami Founder John Porten.

Moonami wasn’t keen on investing in its own data center, so it began investigating other options in the booming cloud storage market, which Research and Markets expects to grow from about $19 billion in 2015 to $65.4 billion in 2020. With support for both CIFS/NFS NAS storage as well as hourly snapshots, Zadara had the flexibility the company needed, and the price was right. It helped that Zadara’ storage servers were located at AWS’ East Coast 1 data center, providing public cloud availability and protection.

Zadara deployed an initial development environment for Moonami within hours after creating an account. Migration involve moving chunks of data over a Secure Shell (SSH) connection over the course of a month. Throughout the process, Zadara technical staff worked with the customer to ensure availability and response times were within contracted service-level agreements.

The cost impact was neutral: “Storage costs were about the same, but Zadara had a better management console,” Porten said. Instead of searching for answers to their technical questions, engineers could now call upon seasoned technical professionals for help. Such calls were needed less often because Zadara handled the management load. “The few times we had questions they were very responsive,” Porten said.

Moonami was quickly able to save about 20 hours per week, or half of a full-time staffer’s workload. Total costs fell thanks to improved storage efficiencies and lower support costs. Files can now also be recovered hourly instead of daily.

Porten drew an analogy between his experience with Zadara and his own business model. “Most of our clients are already running Moodle, but we can do it cheaper for them with fewer headaches,” he said. “We were profitable right out of box, and one reason why is that we didn’t invest a lot in infrastructure.”

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