A method is described and in one embodiment includes monitoring by an integrated circuit device READ/WRITE commands in connection with a flow of an application executing in a Fiber Channel Storage Area Network (“FC-SAN”); determining from the monitored READ/WRITE commands at least one metric for characterizing I/O performance of the application with respect to a storage device, wherein the at least one metric includes at least one of an inter I/O gap (“IIG”), a Logical Unit Number (“LUN”) I/O access pattern (“IAP”), relative block size, I/O operations per second (“IOPS”) and throughput, and IOPS per virtual server; storing the calculated at least one metric in a flow record associated with the flow; and using the calculated at least one metric to identify a storage device for use by the flow, wherein the calculated at least one metric is indicative of a performance of the application in the FC-SAN.