An approach is provided in which a storage system detects that an extent residing on a first one of a set of physical storage devices requires relocation. The storage system identifies a set of backend connection properties of each of a set of backend connections between the storage system and the set of physical storage devices. The set of backend connection properties includes at least a connection bandwidth between the storage system and at least one of the physical storage devices. In turn, the storage system relocates the extent from the first physical storage device to a second one of the set of physical storage devices based at least in part, on the set of backend connection properties.