This document discloses high performance data storage solutions. In an aspect, some solutions can be employed in a cloud-computing environment that provides shared storage for a plurality of customers. In other aspects, the solutions provided by some embodiments can provide multiple tiers of storage, each having a different performance level. This feature can provide a customer with the ability (e.g., through a web portal) to design its own custom storage solution that blends multiple tiers of storage at different capacity and performance levels to attain an optimal level of capacity, performance, and cost. Some disclosed solutions provide a novel arrangement of different types of storage devices that are provisioned through a common API, which can access each storage device's native management interface, as well as the host computer for which the storage will be provisioned, to allocate multiple tiers of storage to the host computer in an automated manner.