Patent ID: 8171484

Claim:
A resource management apparatus of a load balancing system that balances loads of a plurality of processing units, said resource management apparatus managing resources that are processing capabilities of the plurality of processing units, and comprising: a processor comprising: a resource management part configured to manage an amount of resources used and an amount of virtual resources of each of the plurality of processing units; an amount of resources indicating a user data processing capability of the plurality of processing units that are under control of the processor, and the amount of resources used indicating the amount of resources that is accumulated for each processing unit each time a line allocation is made with respect to the plurality of processing units that are under the control of the processor, a selection and control part configured to select a processing unit having a smallest sum of the amount of resources used and the amount of virtual resources, that are managed by the resource management part, in response to an external process request, and to increase the amount of resources used by the selected processing unit, managed by the resource management part, and to decrease the amount of resources used by a processing unit corresponding to an external process release request, managed by the resource management part, in response to the external process release request; a virtual resource control part configured to increase the amount of virtual resources of the processing unit corresponding to the external process release request, managed by the resource management part, in response to the external process release request; and a request sending part configured to send the external process request to the selected processing unit or the external process release request to the corresponding processing unit, wherein the virtual resource control part increases the amount of virtual resources by the same amount as or a predetermined proportion of the amount of resources used that is decreased by the selection and control part.