An infrastructure is described that enables an application's storage-related requirements to be declaratively specified and storage services to be provided for that application in accordance with the specified storage requirements. A centralized storage controller system is provided that receives application storage profile information for an application, where the application storage profile information identifies that application's storage-related requirements. The storage controller system then selects one or more virtual machines for servicing that application's storage needs. The selected one or more storage virtual machines are those that can support, i.e., can provide or satisfy, the application's storage requirements. During runtime, a storage request generated by the application is communicated to the one or more storage virtual machines, which then service the storage request in accordance with the application's specified storage-related requirements.