Patent ID: 8589538

Claim:
A method of storage workload balancing, the method comprising: obtaining, by a processor unit, a number of metrics associated with each of a number of storage providers in a network storage data processing system, wherein the number of storage providers provides access to a number of storage subsystems of the network storage data processing system, and wherein the number of metrics indicate a performance level of each of the number of storage providers; determining, by the processor unit, whether the number of metrics associated with a selected one of the number of storage providers exceeds a number of threshold values; and responsive to a determination that the number of metrics associated with the selected one of the number of storage providers exceeds the number of threshold values, determining, by the processor unit, whether the number of metrics associated with any other storage provider in the number of storage providers is less than the number of threshold values, responsive to a determination that the number of metrics associated with any other storage provider is less than the number of threshold values, transferring a storage subsystem from the selected storage provider to the other storage provider, and responsive to a determination that the number of metrics associated with any other storage provider is greater than the number of threshold values, adding a new storage provider to the network storage data processing system.