DETAILED ACTION
This is in response to the request for continued examination filed on 8/10/2026.
Status of Claims
Claims 1 – 20 are pending, of which claims 1, 9, and 16 are in independent form.
Continued Examination Under 37 CFR 1.114
A request for continued examination under 37 CFR 1.114, including the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e), was filed in this application after final rejection. Since this application is eligible for continued examination under 37 CFR 1.114, and the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e) has been timely paid, the finality of the previous Office action has been withdrawn pursuant to 37 CFR 1.114. Applicant's submission filed on 8/10/2026 has been entered.
Claim Objections
Claims 9 – 15 are objected to because of the following informalities: Independent claim 9 (lines 7 – 8), as amended, states “to facilitate a transfer log file data from the network storage system.” The examiner recommends amending claim 9 to state “to facilitate a transfer of log file data from the network storage system.” Claims 10 – 15 inherit this objection based on their dependencies. Appropriate correction is required.
In the event the determination of the status of the application as subject to AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103 (or as subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103) is incorrect, any correction of the statutory basis (i.e., changing from AIA to pre-AIA ) for the rejection will not be considered a new ground of rejection if the prior art relied upon, and the rationale supporting the rejection, would be the same under either status.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 103 which forms the basis for all obviousness rejections set forth in this Office action:
A patent for a claimed invention may not be obtained, notwithstanding that the claimed invention is not identically disclosed as set forth in section 102, if the differences between the claimed invention and the prior art are such that the claimed invention as a whole would have been obvious before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to a person having ordinary skill in the art to which the claimed invention pertains. Patentability shall not be negated by the manner in which the invention was made.
Claims 1, 5 – 9, 13 – 16, and 18 – 20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Golander et al., U.S. Patent Application 2017/0104820 (hereinafter referred to as Golander) in view of ‘IBM Spectrum LSF 10.1.0’ by IBM (hereinafter referred to as IBM).
Note that IBM Spectrum LSF 10.1.0 has a copyright date of 2025 on page 2. However, as seen on various Fix Pack sections, the majority of this document was published prior to Applicant’s filing date. (Fix Pack 1 release date is 2016 – page 114, Fix Pack 2 release date is 2017 - page 108, ... Fix Pack 11 release date is December 2020 - page 26, Fix pack 12 release date is August 2021 - page 19).
Referring to claim 1, Golander discloses “A storage system comprising:
one or more processing resources; and one or more non-transitory computer-readable media, coupled to the one or more processing resources, having stored therein instructions that when executed by the one or more processing resources cause the storage system to” (Fig. 1B CPU 11 with applications 120 and [0022] processing of data): “maintain a send queue having a fixed number of slots within an interconnect layer of the storage system interposed between a file system and a Remote Direct Memory Access (RDMA) layer of the storage system” (Fig. 4 [0027] interconnect between initiator and target, [0035] allocating memory for file system of initiator and initiator uses RDMA to directly write to target’s memory, [0078] sending a log and data via RDMA, [0085] transmit queues at initiator, [0087] initiator with file system, QPs and RDMA); “facilitate a transfer of log file data from the storage system to another storage system” and “cause the interconnect layer to perform an RDMA operation, using the send queue, to carry out the transfer of the log file data” ([0078] and [0089] sending a log and data via RDMA, [0085] transmit queues at initiator, [0087] initiator with file system, QPs and RDMA).
Golander does not appear to explicitly disclose “during a first phase of a plurality of phases of a write transaction of the file system, facilitate a transfer of log file data from the storage system to another storage system by making a reservation for a plurality of slots within the send queue; and during a second phase of the plurality of phases of the write transaction, consume the reservation and cause the interconnect layer to perform an RDMA operation, using the send queue, to carry out the transfer of the log file data.”
However, IBM discloses “during a first phase of a plurality of phases of a write transaction of the file system, facilitate a transfer of” “data from the storage system to another storage system by making a reservation for a plurality of slots within the send queue; and during a second phase of the plurality of phases of the write transaction, consume the reservation and cause the interconnect layer to perform an” “operation, using the send queue, to carry out the transfer of” “data” (page 192 shows cluster with jobs in queue until available resources are ready, eventually resources execute the job. “Queue” page 193 - all jobs wait in queues until they are scheduled and dispatched to hosts. “File systems, directories, and files” page 211 – “hosts have shared file systems.” "Remote queue counter collection" page 1205 - "The submission cluster receives up-to-date information about each queue in remote clusters. This information is considered during job forwarding decisions.” “Advance reservation" page 1208 - "When an advance reservation is active on a remote cluster, slots within the advance reservation are excluded from the number of available slots.” “Dynamically scheduled reservations” page 937 - “A dynamically scheduled reservation accepts jobs based on currently available resources. Use the brsvsub command to create a dynamically scheduled reservation and submit a job to fill the advance reservation when the resources required by the job are available.” “Job scheduling in advance reservations” page 939 – “When the total number of slots on the reserved host is changed for whatever reason, LSF immediately updates the host reservation to reserve the new total number of slots or CPUs.” Pages 1481-1483 brsvsub "Creates a dynamically scheduled reservation and submits a job to fill the advance reservation when the resources required by the job are available”).
Golander and IBM are analogous art because they are from the same field of endeavor, which is clustered computing systems.
Before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art, having the teachings of Golander and IBM before him or her, to modify the teachings of Golander to include the teachings of IBM so that a first phase of a write transaction includes reserving queue slots of a send queue and a second phase consumes the reservation and carries out the data transfer.
The motivation for doing so would have been to efficiently manage transfer of data (as described by IBM at ‘About resource reservation’ on page 328) and avoid issues as described by IBM at ‘Reserving resources’ on page 692 (“pending indefinitely”).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to combine IBM with Golander to obtain the invention as specified in the instant claim.
As per claim 5, Golander discloses “the RDMA layer is software emulated” ([0060] queue-pair (QP) software interface. [0087] RDMA-based networking technology wherein the software interface is typically a network queue-pair (QP) that guarantees an efficient in-order transmission for its own data).
As per claim 6, IBM discloses “the first phase comprises a suspendible phase and the second phase comprises a non-preemptable phase” (pages 742-750 resource preemption and job slot preemption, “If you enable preemptive scheduling, job slot preemption is always enabled. Resource preemption is optional.” ‘Customize the SUSPEND action’ on page 744. ‘Configure memory preemption’ on page 746. ‘About preemptive scheduling’ on page 747 describes a preemptive queue and a preemptable queue. Page 897 details more about optimizing preemption).
As per claim 7, IBM discloses “the interconnect layer implements an application programming interface (API) exposing a method through which a client of the interconnect layer receives information regarding a number of slots of the fixed number of slots required for performing a given transaction” (page 74 ‘Total number of requested slots.’ Page 132 using APIs).
As per claim 8, Golander discloses “the send queue is mapped to a particular
queue pair (QP) of a plurality of QPs maintained within the RDMA layer” ([0085] transmit queues at initiator. [0060] queue-pair (QP) software interface. [0087] RDMA-based networking technology wherein the software interface is typically a network queue-pair (QP) that guarantees an efficient in-order transmission for its own data).
Referring to claim 9, claim 1 recites the corresponding limitations as that of claim 9. Therefore, the rejection of claim 1 applies to claim 9.
Further, Golander discloses “a transfer [of] log file data from the network storage system to a secondary network storage system” using “the interconnect layer” (Fig. 4 [0027] interconnect between initiator and target. Fig. 4 and [0089] sending a log through a QP and transmit queue to a target node).
Also, as above, Golander does not appear to explicitly disclose “during a load phase of a write transaction of the file system” making a reservation, “a transfer [of] log file data from the network storage system to a secondary network storage system by invoking a first method of an application programming interface (API) of the interconnect layer; and during a modify phase of the write transaction” carrying out the transfer.
However, IBM discloses “during a load phase of a write transaction of the file system” making a reservation, “a transfer [of] log file data from the network storage system to a secondary network storage system by invoking a first method of an application programming interface (API) of the interconnect layer; and during a modify phase of the write transaction” carrying out the transfer (page 192 shows cluster with jobs in queue until available resources are ready, eventually resources execute the job. “Queue” page 193 - all jobs wait in queues until they are scheduled and dispatched to hosts. “File systems, directories, and files” page 211 – “hosts have shared file systems.” "Remote queue counter collection" page 1205 - "The submission cluster receives up-to-date information about each queue in remote clusters. This information is considered during job forwarding decisions.” “Advance reservation" page 1208 - "When an advance reservation is active on a remote cluster, slots within the advance reservation are excluded from the number of available slots.” “Dynamically scheduled reservations” page 937 - “A dynamically scheduled reservation accepts jobs based on currently available resources. Use the brsvsub command to create a dynamically scheduled reservation and submit a job to fill the advance reservation when the resources required by the job are available.” “Job scheduling in advance reservations” page 939 – “When the total number of slots on the reserved host is changed for whatever reason, LSF immediately updates the host reservation to reserve the new total number of slots or CPUs.” Pages 1481-1483 brsvsub "Creates a dynamically scheduled reservation and submits a job to fill the advance reservation when the resources required by the job are available.” Page 132 using APIs).
Golander and IBM are analogous art because they are from the same field of endeavor, which is clustered computing systems.
Before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art, having the teachings of Golander and IBM before him or her, to modify the teachings of Golander to include the teachings of IBM so that a first phase of a write transaction includes reserving queue slots of a send queue and a second phase consumes the reservation and carries out the data transfer.
The motivation for doing so would have been to efficiently manage transfer of data (as described by IBM at ‘About resource reservation’ on page 328) and avoid issues as described by IBM at ‘Reserving resources’ on page 692 (“pending indefinitely”).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to combine IBM with Golander to obtain the invention as specified in the instant claim.
As per claim 13, Golander discloses “responsive to receipt by the file system of an acknowledgement indicative of completion of the RDMA operation” ([0087] QPs and RDMA, [0090] acknowledgement).
Golander does not appear to explicitly disclose “responsive to receipt by the file system of an acknowledgement indicative of completion of the RDMA operation, releasing, by the file system, the reservation.”
However, IBM discloses “responsive to receipt” “of an acknowledgement indicative of completion of the” “operation, releasing, by the” initiator, “the reservation” (starting on page 502 'Configuration to modify when new jobs can start' reporting a job finish status of DONE causes LSF to release resources associated with the job).
Golander and IBM are analogous art because they are from the same field of endeavor, which is clustered computing systems.
Before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art, having the teachings of Golander and IBM before him or her, to modify the teachings of Golander to include the teachings of IBM so that a first phase of a write transaction includes reserving queue slots of a send queue and a second phase consumes the reservation and carries out the data transfer.
The motivation for doing so would have been to efficiently manage transfer of data (as described by IBM at ‘About resource reservation’ on page 328) and avoid issues as described by IBM at ‘Reserving resources’ on page 692 (“pending indefinitely”).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to combine IBM with Golander to obtain the invention as specified in the instant claim.
Note, claim 14 recites the corresponding limitations of claim 7. Therefore, the rejection of claim 7 applies to claim 14.
Note, claim 15 recites the corresponding limitations of claim 8. Therefore, the rejection of claim 8 applies to claim 15.
Referring to claim 16, claim 1 recites the corresponding limitations as that of claim 16. Therefore, the rejection of claim 1 applies to claim 16.
Further, Golander discloses “A non-transitory computer-readable storage medium embodying a set of instructions, which when executed by one or more processing resources of a network storage system, cause the network storage system to” carry out steps of claim 1 (Fig. 1B CPU 11 with applications 120 and [0022] processing of data).
Note, claim 18 recites the corresponding limitations of claim 5. Therefore, the rejection of claim 5 applies to claim 18.
Note, claim 19 recites the corresponding limitations of claim 7. Therefore, the rejection of claim 7 applies to claim 19.
Note, claim 20 recites the corresponding limitations of claim 8. Therefore, the rejection of claim 8 applies to claim 20.
Claims 2 and 17 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Golander in view of IBM, as applied to claims above, further in view of Budhia et al., U.S. Patent 7,962,562 (hereinafter referred to as Budhia).
As per claim 2, Golander discloses “the instructions further cause the storage
system to maintain the log file data containing a plurality of storage operations performed on the storage system” “and wherein the data represents at least a portion of the log file” ([0029] maintain a log of state modifying operations at the file system, Fig. 4 [0089] log sent through transmit queue).
Neither Golander nor IBM appears to explicitly disclose “the log file data containing a plurality of storage operations performed on the storage system since completion of a consistency point.”
However, Budhia discloses “log file data containing a plurality of storage operations performed on the storage system since completion of a consistency point” (column 2 lines 15 – 31 NVLog holds a log of write requests since the last consistency point).
Golander, IBM, and Budhia are analogous art because they are from the same field of endeavor, which is clustered computing systems.
Before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art, having the teachings of Golander, IBM, and Budhia before him or her, to modify the teachings of Golander and IBM to include the teachings of Budhia so that the log file holds operations since completion of a consistency point.
The motivation for doing so would have been to provide a means for avoiding saving data modifications every time a write request is made and dealing with the possibility of a system failure occurring between consistency points (as stated by Budhia at column 2 lines 5 – 10 and 15 – 31).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to combine Budhia with Golander and IBM to obtain the invention as specified in the instant claim.
Note, claim 17 recites the corresponding limitations of claim 2. Therefore, the rejection of claim 2 applies to claim 17.
Claims 3 and 10 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Golander in view of IBM, as applied to claims above, further in view of Hendel, U.S. Patent Application 2004/0120332 (hereinafter referred to as Hendel).
As per claim 3, IBM discloses “the fixed number of slots is partitioned into an
urgent pool, an available pool” “and wherein the reservation is made within the urgent pool or the available pool” (page 313 priority queue and idle queue).
Neither Golander nor IBM appears to explicitly disclose “and a no reserve pool.”
However, Hendel discloses “an urgent pool, an available pool, and a no reserve pool” ([0030] resources are allocated to active queues, some resources are reserved for every other queue, one send queue faulting does not affect other send queues).
Golander, IBM, and Hendel are analogous art because they are from the same field of endeavor, which is clustered computing systems.
Before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art, having the teachings of Golander, IBM, and Hendel before him or her, to modify the teachings of Golander and IBM to include the teachings of Hendel so that the transmit queue is partitioned into an urgent pool, an available pool, and a no reserve pool.
The motivation for doing so would have been to dynamically allocate shared resources among transmission queues with allowances made for traffic burstiness, the termination of different queues in different fault domains, and the variation among the queues regarding traffic levels, latencies, etc. (as stated by Hendel at [0030]).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to combine Hendel with Golander and IBM to obtain the invention as specified in the instant claim.
Note, claim 10 recites the corresponding limitations of claim 3. Therefore, the rejection of claim 3 applies to claim 10.
Claims 4 and 11 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Golander in view of IBM, further in view of Hendel, as applied to claims above, further in view of Ito, U.S. Patent Application 2010/0229182 (hereinafter referred to as Ito).
As per claim 4, as above, Golander/IBM/Hendel teaches “the fixed number of slots for each of the urgent pool, the available pool, and the no reserve pool.”
Neither Golander nor IBM nor Hendel appears to explicitly disclose “the instructions further cause the storage system to initialize a number of slots.”
However, Ito discloses “the instructions further cause the storage system to initialize a number of slots” ([0045] allocating queue lengths).
Golander, IBM, Hendel, and Ito are analogous art because they are from the same field of endeavor, which is distributed computing systems/networks.
Before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art, having the teachings of Golander, IBM, Hendel, and Ito before him or her, to modify the teachings of Golander, IBM, and Hendel to include the teachings of Ito so that the system utilizes an instruction to initialize a number of slots of a queue.
The motivation for doing so would have been to provide for customization of queue length so that high-priority queues can have longer lengths (as stated by Ito at [0045]).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to combine Ito with Golander, IBM, and Hendel to obtain the invention as specified in the instant claim.
Note, claim 11 recites the corresponding limitations of claim 4. Therefore, the rejection of claim 4 applies to claim 11.
Further, IBM discloses initializing “via an initialize method of the API” (API compatibility page 132).
Claim 12 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Golander in view of IBM, as applied to claims above, further in view of Shankar et al., U.S. Patent Application 2012/0166886 (hereinafter referred to as Shankar).
As per claim 12, Golander discloses “the file system” ([0035] allocating memory for file system of initiator, [0087] initiator with file system).
Neither Golander nor IBM appears to explicitly disclose “the file system comprises a write-anywhere file system.”
However, Shankar discloses RDMA connections between nodes (Fig. 3A and [0036]) wherein “the file system comprises a write-anywhere file system” ([0036] may include a file system (which can be implemented as a Write Anywhere File System (WAFL), [0045] Upper subsystem 312 may be a file system (which can be implemented as a Write Anywhere File System (WAFL)).
Golander, IBM, and Shankar are analogous art because they are from the same field of endeavor, which is clustered computing systems.
Before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art, having the teachings of Golander, IBM, and Shankar before him or her, to modify the teachings of Golander and IBM to include the teachings of Shankar so that the file system comprises a write-anywhere file system.
The motivation for doing so would have been to take advantage of the features of WAFL, such as WAFL’s accumulating and flushing of thousands of operations worth of data to persistent storage, which allows better layout decisions and amortizes the associated overhead (as stated by ‘Scalable Write Allocation in the WAFL File System’ by Curtis-Maury et al. in section II. C.).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to combine Shankar with Golander and IBM to obtain the invention as specified in the instant claim.
Response to Arguments
Applicant's arguments filed 8/10/2026 have been fully considered but they are not persuasive.
Applicant argues, on page 6 line 19 – page 7 line 4, that:
the asserted Golander-IBM combination does not teach or suggest this amended limitation. Golander may disclose logical mirroring, RDMA
writing, and transmit queues or queue pairs in a memory-based file-system environment. However, Golander does not teach reserving a plurality of slots of an interconnect-layer send queue during a first phase of a file-system write transaction for later consumption during a second phase to perform an RDMA transfer log file data.
IBM, in turn, is directed to scheduler-level resource reservation in IBM Spectrum LSF, including reservations of job slots, hosts, processors, or memory for pending or scheduled jobs. IBM's reservation mechanism addresses job scheduling and allocation of computing resources to jobs; it is not a reservation of entries in an RDMA-adjacent interconnect-layer send queue, and it is not tied to a multi-phase file-system write transaction or to log file mirroring. Thus, even considering Golander and IBM in combination, the cited art does not provide the claimed arrangement.
The examiner disagrees. As stated in the Patent Board Decision of 6/9/2026, the Board found that:
The Examiner relies on Golander for "transmit queues, which are considered equivalent to Appellant's send queue." Ans. 18-19. The Examiner relies on IBM for "collecting information regarding queues and advance reservation of slots of queues" and for teaching "file systems and write transactions," including discussing "read/write permissions." Id. at 19. Appellant does not explain why the claimed reservation of slots within a send queue would not have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art in view of the Examiner's combination of IBM's reservation of queue slots with Golander's transmit queues.
The examiner maintains that the combination of IBM’s reservation of slots of queues, combined with Golander’s transmit queues, RDMA, and log data would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art.
Applicant argues, on page 7 lines 5 - 14, that
Importing IBM’s job-scheduler reservation concept into Golander’s mirroring system would, at most, suggest reserving scheduler resources such as hosts, job slots, processors, or memory for jobs. It would not teach or suggest modifying Golander to reserve slots in an interconnect-layer send queue during a first phase of a file-system write transaction so that those same reserved send-queue slots are consumed during a second phase to cause an RDMA operation, using the send queue, to transfer log file data
The examiner disagrees. As above, Golander is cited as teaching a file system and a plurality of slots within a send queue to facilitate transfer of log file data. IBM is then cited as teaching distribution of data. As previously stated by Applicant “the LSF software provides for advance reservations that ensure access to specific hosts or slots during specified times.”
As previously stated, the examiner’s position is that “it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art, having the teachings of Golander and IBM before him or her, to modify the teachings of Golander to include the teachings of IBM so that a first phase of a write transaction includes reserving queue slots and a second phase consumes the reservation and carries out the data transfer.” The examiner also points to IBM at pages 192 – 193, which show a cluster with jobs in a queue until available resources are ready, with the resources eventually executing the job. All jobs wait in queues until they are scheduled and dispatched to hosts. This dispatching to a host shows that under a broadest reasonable interpretation, IBM’s queue is considered equivalent to a ‘send queue.’ Further, as above, even if IBM’s queue is not equivalent, Golander’s transmit queues are equivalent to Applicant’s claimed ‘send queue.’
Again, in the Patent Board Decision of 6/9/2026, the Board found that:
The Examiner relies on Golander for "transmit queues, which are considered equivalent to Appellant's send queue." Ans. 18-19. The Examiner relies on IBM for "collecting information regarding queues and advance reservation of slots of queues" and for teaching "file systems and write transactions," including discussing "read/write permissions." Id. at 19. Appellant does not explain why the claimed reservation of slots within a send queue would not have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art in view of the Examiner's combination of IBM's reservation of queue slots with Golander's transmit queues.
The examiner maintains that the combination of IBM’s reservation of slots of queues, combined with Golander’s transmit queues, RDMA, and log data would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art.
Contact Information
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to STEVEN G SNYDER whose telephone number is (571)270-1971. The examiner can normally be reached on M-F 8:00am-4:30pm (flexible).
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/STEVEN G SNYDER/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2184
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