For example, as seen on the right side of FIG. 2, a user space-based application 214 residing in the user space 210 interfaces with IO load balancing and submission functionality 216 residing in the user space. The IO load balancing and submission functionality 216 is configured to submit IO operations to the storage array via HBA 232 using user space-based function calls and libraries and user space block devices 218. In this case, IO load balancing and submission functionality 216 does not utilize the functionality found in the kernel space 220 for submitting the IO operations to the logical volume 240 of the storage array 105 via the HBA 232.