Patent ID: 7424536

Claim:
A bandwidth control method in a computer system including a plurality of computers that share a storage apparatus, comprising the steps of: assigning, by a first computer of the plurality of computers, priorities to access requests received from a client computer connected to the computer system, the priorities being based on an attribute of the client computer; determining a bandwidth for use with the storage apparatus through an exchange of information about the priorities with a rest of the plurality of computers; transmitting each of the access requests to the storage apparatus based on the determined bandwidth, wherein the step of determining the bandwidth includes deriving an accumulated priority value by adding the priorities assigned to the received access requests and exchanging the accumulated priority value of the first computer with accumulated priority values derived by the rest of the plurality of computers; calculating, by the first computer, a ratio of the accumulated priority value for the first computer to a total accumulated priority value derived by adding the accumulated priority value for the first computer to the accumulated priority values of the rest of the plurality of computers; and determining the bandwidth for use with the storage apparatus in accordance with the ratio.