Provided are an area management table, an operation management policy, and
a resource broker. In the area management table, one or more physical
area IDs for identifying one or more storage area candidates selected
from a plurality of physical storage areas, are associated with each
application program. The operation management policy states a guideline
for storage area assignments based on operational status of each server
provided with the application programs. The resource broker detects the
operational status of each server, and based on the detected operational
statuses and the operation management policy, determines physical storage
areas to assign to each application program.