Scalable performance-based volume allocation in large storage controller collections

A storage system, comprising:

• a hierarchy of interconnected storage components represented as a global resource tree comprising a plurality of nodes corresponding to the different interconnected storage components for the storage system, the storage system having a hierarchy of interconnected hardware elements in a plurality of component layers as nodes of the storage system;
• a processor for determining a gap value for each node of the global resource tree and for generating an ordered allocation list of volumes on a plurality of leaf nodes of the global resource tree based on ordering the leaf nodes by the gap value for each of the leaf nodes, the gap value for each node is a throughput limit for a non-leaf node and a capacity limit for a leaf node;
• 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.