In an environment in which storages are intensively collected, many unused
areas are generated and no storage resources can be efficiently used as a
storage pool. The capacity utilization (data capacity) of a storage
device (volume) allocated to a computer is obtained and future capacity
utilization is estimated from a change in the data capacity. The capacity
of the storage device is compared with upper limit securing capacity and
lower limit securing capacity values indicating the upper and lower
limits of appropriate allocating capacity calculated from this estimated
capacity utilization. When the capacity of the storage device is greater
than the upper limit securing capacity, a different storage device,
having at least the lower limit securing capacity and no more than the
upper limit securing capacity, is allocated from the storage pool, and
the storage device allocated previously is collected in the storage pool.