A method and system identifies a cloud configuration for deploying a software application. A performance of a target application and workload is characterized. A set of benchmark applications is then deployed into at least one target cloud infrastructure. The target infrastructure is characterized using the set of benchmarking applications. The performance of the target application is represented with a set of bins each corresponding to a resource subsystem of a virtual machine and a performance score that is required to deploy the target application and meet the target performance. The bins are filled with performance values for selected target virtual machines. Using the filled bins, a set of virtual machines needed to satisfy the target cloud infrastructure is determined. A recommendation is provided for the set of virtual machines to use in deploying the software application.