Techniques for operating a storage front-end system are disclosed. The techniques include identifying a synchronous group of data storage devices across two or more enclosures, each of which comprise a plurality of data storage devices. Data across the data storage devices is accessible by a storage front-end system as an aggregate memory space. The techniques further include sending an activation request to the enclosures to synchronously activate the data storage devices in the synchronous group and performing a data maintenance task in the aggregate memory space of the data storage devices.