A method provides a storage service, and is performed on a set of computerized devices. The method includes connecting the computerized devices to a computer network. The computerized devices include direct attached storage devices (e.g., SCSI disk drives). The method further includes configuring the computerized devices to behave as hosts which individually and logically couple to an array of storage devices through a shared bus, and performing a host IO operation among the computerized devices. The host IO operation involves accessing data from a particular computerized device through the computer network to the direct attached storage devices of the computerized devices in lieu of accessing the data from the particular computerized device through an actual shared bus to an actual array of storage devices.