Implementations described and claimed herein provide systems and methods for tuning and sizing one or more storage appliances in a storage system with respect to an application load and for optimizing a storage system based on a configuration of a client network and/or a storage appliance in a storage network. In one implementation, data corresponding to an application load configured to be applied to a storage appliance in the storage system is obtained. The application load is characterized in the context of a configuration of the storage system. One or more recommendations for optimizing performance of the storage system based on the characterized application load are generated.