Patent ID: 8412890

Claim:
A computer program embodied on a computer readable medium, comprising: program instructions for determining a gap value for each node of a global resource tree for a storage system, the storage system having a hierarchy of interconnected hardware elements in a plurality of component layers as nodes of the storage system, the gap value for each node is a throughput limit for a non-leaf node and a capacity limit for a leaf node; and program instructions for generating an ordered allocation list of volumes on a plurality of leaf nodes of the global resource tree of the storage system based on ordering the leaf nodes by the gap value for each of the leaf nodes; wherein the gap value for each node corresponds to an estimate of a new workload amount that can be allocated to one or more nodes in a subtree of the global resource tree without exceeding performance and space limits of any nodes of the subtree, wherein the subtree includes one or more non-leaf nodes and one or more leaf nodes.