A peer-to-peer auction based strategy balances the storage of data in a data center. Each cluster of the data center has a cluster manager and associated data storage nodes on which data is stored. The data storage nodes can periodically announce their respective utilization levels to other data storage nodes. If the announcing nodes are over capacity, the other nodes in the cluster respond by checking their utilization level and placing a bid if they are able to accept new data. Data is then relocated to one or more selected bidding nodes. If data cannot be balanced at the data storage node level, the cluster manager can identify nodes in other clusters that are able to accept new data. Multiple auctions for the same or different categories of data can be conducted at the same time by the data storage nodes and/or cluster managers.