In one embodiment, at least one characteristic of an ecosystem is monitored. The ecosystem includes i) a plurality of compute resources, and ii) a number of storage applications, wherein the number of storage applications are configured to use a plurality of storage access protocols. Which of the storage access protocols are implemented by which of the compute resources are tracked; and in response to the monitored characteristic(s) of the ecosystem being found unacceptable, an attempt is made to improve the monitored characteristic(s) by repurposing one or more of the compute resources to implement, or not implement, one of the storage access protocols.