<p>If a monitor measurement cycle is set as a long cycle, promotion in a short cycle cannot be performed; and even if the number of I/Os is very large in response to fluctuations of the number of I/Os in several minutes to several hours of normal work, pages will be promoted after waiting for several weeks. As a result, I/Os which could have normally accepted by an upper tier will be accepted by a lower tier, which results in a problem of worsening the performance efficiency. A monitoring system capable of preventing demotion due to temporary reduction of the number of I/Os for specific pages from a viewpoint of a long cycle and enabling prompt promotion in response to an increase of the number of I/Os for 3 the specific pages is realized. A load index value defined from a viewpoint of a long cycle and a load index value defined from a viewpoint of a short cycle are updated based on the number of I/Os which is counted cyclically for each storage area. Promotion and demotion are implemented based on a value(s) calculated from these load index values.</p>
