Certain embodiments described herein are generally directed to enforcing application-specific quality of service (QoS) requirements over a storage network. The method for enforcing application-specific quality of service (QoS) requirements over a storage network includes receiving an input-output (I/O) command from a virtual machine executing an application, wherein the I/O command corresponds to an I/O request generated by the application and is tagged with a QoS classification corresponding to QoS requirements of the application, determining a QoS value corresponding to the QoS classification of the I/O command, and transmitting a data frame including the I/O command and the QoS value to a target network adapter through a switch fabric in a network, the switch fabric having a plurality of switches each configured to forward the data frame based on the QoS value.