A system and method include classifying and assigning virtual disks accessed from compute only nodes. The method determines, by a management processor of a virtual computing system, characteristics for a plurality of virtual disks hosted on a plurality of hyper converged nodes in a cluster of nodes in the virtual computing system. The method further classifies, by the management processor, each of the plurality of virtual disks based on the determined characteristics and identifies, by the management processor, one of the plurality of virtual disks to host data for a virtual machine on a compute only node based on the classification to spread out input-output demand in the cluster, reducing probability of input-output bottlenecks and increasing cluster-wide storage throughput. The method also assigns, by the management processor, the identified virtual disk to host data for the virtual machine located on the compute only node.