"nice" I/O?

[Clark Thomborson]

Problem: one I/O-bound process on one workstation can nearly saturate our
fileserver.  Two I/O-bound processes make life miserable.  I don't know of
any concept of "I/O priority" in either Unix or NFS that would limit the
frequency of fileservice for such processes.  Is there such a notion
anywhere in the Unix world?

Solution(?): I can imagine a new "limit" parameter, pagefault_frequency.
A process with a pagefault_frequency of 5, for example, would get no more
than 5 pagefault requests each second from its local Unix kernel...the
sixth would be delayed until the next second.

Can anyone think of a simple workaround that doesn't involve kernel
hacking?  I don't want to wait years for a solution.