Patent ID: 7130928

Claim:
A processing apparatus which is coupled to a storage apparatus via a plurality of physical paths as transmission paths for a plurality of data input/output requests to be transmitted to the storage apparatus, the transmission occurring in association with the execution of an application program managed as a process by an operating system, the processing apparatus comprising: a CPU; a memory; an association storage section implemented by the CPU executing a program stored in the memory; a transmission controller implemented by the CPU executing a program stored in the memory; and a physical path proportion storage section implemented by the CPU executing a program stored in the memory, wherein the association storage section stores a first information piece about attributes identifying a specific process generating data input/output requests in such a manner that the first information piece is associated with a second information piece identifying at least one of the physical paths as at least one first physical path, and wherein when transmitting first data input/output requests generated by the process identified by the first information piece to the storage apparatus, the transmission controller transmits the first data input/output requests to the storage apparatus via the first physical path identified by the second information piece associated with the first information piece and, when transmitting second data input/output requests generated by a process not identified by the first information piece to the storage apparatus, transmits the second data input/output requests to the storage apparatus via at least one second physical path different from the first physical path of the plurality of physical paths, wherein the physical path proportion storage section stores the proportion of the number of physical paths used as the first physical paths to the number of physical paths used as the second physical paths, and the association storage section stores the first information piece in such a manner that the first information piece is associated with a second information piece identifying a number, according to the proportion, of the first physical paths, and wherein when at least some of the data input/output requests to be transmitted to the storage apparatus are the first data input/output requests, the transmission controller transmits the first data input/output requests to the storage apparatus via a number, assigned according to the proportion, of the first physical paths, and transmits the second data input/output requests to the storage apparatus via a number, assigned according to the proportion, of the second physical paths.