Patent ID: 8108871

Claim:
A method comprising: determining a number of resource-utilization units of resources of a computer system to be allocated among plural groups for an allocation period, each of said groups containing one or more jobs to be executed using said resources; assigning group allocations of said resource-utilization units to each of said groups so that each of said groups is assigned a respective group number of said resource-allocation units, said allocations including, for each of said groups, a respective group-reserve allocation of a respective positive integer group-reserve number less than the respective group number of said resource-utilization units, and for each combination of one of said groups and one of said resources, a respective group-resource allocation of a respective non-negative integer group-resource number of said resource-utilization units, at least one of said group-resource allocations consisting of a positive integer group-resource number of said resource-utilization units; and switching off a job from one of said resources at a time during said allocation period determined in part by said allocations, wherein the respective group number is equal to the sum of the respective group-reserve number and the respective group-resource numbers; the respective group number represents a total number of resource-utilization units allocated to that group; for each of said resources, the respective group-resource number represents that portion of the respective group number associated with that resource and allocated to that group; and the respective group-reserve number represents that portion of the respective group number allocated to that group but not associated with any of said resources.