A method and technique for allocation and balancing of storage resources includes monitoring, for each of a plurality of storage controllers, input/output (I/O) latency, network bandwidth utilization, and network latency associated with each storage volume controlled by a respective storage controller. Responsive to receiving a request to allocate a new storage volume, a type of application and an anticipated storage workload level that will utilize one or more of the storage volumes by the application is determined. The I/O latency, network bandwidth utilization, and network latency is analyzed relative to respective thresholds, and the new storage volume is allocated to a selected storage controller based on the analysis and the anticipated storage workload level.