A plurality of performance-based storage nodes and a plurality of capacity-based storage nodes of a data storage system in a network environment are allocated to one or more tiered resource pools such that the performance-based storage nodes and the capacity-based storage nodes allocated to each one of the one or more tiered resource pools are addressable via a given virtual address for each tiered resource pool. Access to the performance-based storage nodes and the capacity-based storage nodes in the one or more tiered resource pools by a plurality of compute nodes is managed transparent to the compute nodes via a given storage policy. At least portions of the compute nodes, the performance-based storage nodes, and the capacity-based storage nodes are operatively coupled via a plurality of network devices. One or more of the allocating and managing steps are automatically performed under control of at least one processing device.