A distributed shared log storage system employs an adapter that translates APIs for a big data application to APIs of the distributed shared log storage system. The adapter is configured for different big data applications in accordance with a profile thereof, so that storage performance using the distributed shared log storage system can be comparable to the storage performance of the profiled big data application. An over-utilized adapter instance is detected and the workload assigned to the over-utilized adapter instance is either moved to a different adapter instance that can handle the workload or split among two or more adapter instances.