Systems and methods for allocating resources are disclosed. Resources as processing time, writes or reads are allocated. Credits are issued to the clients in a manner that ensure the system is operating in a safe allocation state. The credits can be used not only to allocate resources but also to throttle clients where necessary. Credits can be granted fully, partially, and in a number greater than requested. Zero or negative credits can also be issued to throttle clients. Segment credits are associated with identifying unique fingerprints or segments and may be allocated by determining how many credits a CPU/cores can support. This maximum number may be divided amongst clients connected with the server.