DETAILED ACTION
The present application, filed on or after March 16, 2013, is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA .
Response to Amendment
This office action is in response to applicant’s amendment and RCE filed, 26 September 2025, of application filed, with the above serial number, on 11 January 2022 in which claims 1, 18 have been amended. Claims 1-9, 18 are pending in the application.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 112
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112(b):
(b) CONCLUSION.—The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor regards as the invention.
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph:
The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the applicant regards as his invention.
Claims 1-9, 18 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph, as being indefinite for failing to particularly point out and distinctly claim the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor (or for applications subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, the applicant), regards as the invention. The claims are amended to add ‘determine that the old host machine is not reachable to receive the port-delete notification, resulting in the virtual resource hosted on the old host machine not being deleted from the old host machine.’ It is indefinite if such result occurs as the notification is described to be a port delete command not a virtual resource delete command; are the notifications themselves moving the resources or adding ports or addresses to the host machines for them to be available? Are the resources being deleted or moved with a port delete notification, the specification does not clearly indicate, for example, that deleting a port deletes the resources.
Claim 1, 18 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph, as being indefinite for failing to particularly point out and distinctly claim the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor (or for applications subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, the applicant), regards as the invention. The claim is amended to add “wherein the second virtual resource is the virtual resource that is hosted by the old host machine” while also claiming “the second virtual resource being at least one of (a) the most recently instantiated virtual resource as compared to the first virtual resource”. Thus, it is indefinite how the second virtual resource can be older while also most recently instantiated and if such condition would ever even occur.
Claims 1-9, 18 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph, as being indefinite for failing to particularly point out and distinctly claim the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor (or for applications subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, the applicant), regards as the invention. The claims recite both ‘identify two or more of the plurality of virtual resources that separately persist within the network’ (later claiming that the plurality include the second virtual resource) and ‘determining that the second virtual resource is in a non-running state’. The specification does not use the term ‘persist’ but some other versions including the resources being duplicate. However, it is not clear on the scope of persist and non-running and it is thus indefinite how a resource can simultaneously persist and be non-running/ not reachable as if the resource is not reachable how is it known if it is running or persisting.
Claims 1-9, 18 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph, as being indefinite for failing to particularly point out and distinctly claim the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor (or for applications subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, the applicant), regards as the invention. The independent claims 1, 18 appear to repeat the selection of the first virtual resource, it is not clear if the repetition differs:
“in response to the identifying, select the first virtual resource to instantiate additional resources for, the selecting being based on multi-dimensional information and comprising:
determining that the second virtual resource is either (a) a most recently instantiated virtual resource as compared to the first virtual resource, or (b) a resource that is connected to a particular storage node;
determining that the second virtual resource is in a non-running state;
determining that the first virtual resource is in a running state; and
selecting the first virtual resource as the selected virtual resource based on the:
the second virtual resource being at least one of (a) the most recently instantiated virtual resource as compared to the first virtual resource or (b) the resource that is connected to the particular storage node, and
the non-running state of the second virtual resource and the running state of the first virtual resource”
(emphasis added for like features)
Claim 6 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph, as being indefinite for failing to particularly point out and distinctly claim the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor (or for applications subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, the applicant), regards as the invention. It is not clear if claim 6 further defines claim 1 from which it depends as claim 6 claims a limitation of B broad (eg. statuses of the resources) with claim 1 reciting B specific (eg. running or non-running), with only one of the alternatives in claim 6 being required. Further, claim 6 recites the selecting based on ‘metadata’ while claim 1 recites ‘multi-dimensional information’ which appears to be the same type of information in the specification and it is not clear if the metadata is different.
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.
Claim(s) 1-9, 18 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Wu et al (hereinafter “Wu”, 2015/0112944) in view of Marklund (hereinafter “Marklund”, 2004/0057429).
As per Claim 1, Wu discloses a computing system comprising:
one or more processors; and memory that stores instructions that are executable by the one more processors to cause the computing system to:
monitor and provide policies to a plurality of virtual resources in a network (at least paragraph 69, 71; virtualization module monitoring virtual machines and provide storage resources for virtual machines);
identify two or more of the plurality of virtual resources that separately persist within the network and that comprise identical virtual resource identifiers (at least paragraph 114-117; redundant virtual machines wherein the identifier of the backup virtual machine may be the same as or different from the identifier of the source virtual machine), wherein the two or more of the plurality of virtual resources include a first virtual resource and a second virtual resource (at least paragraph 114-117; eg. VM1 and VM2 with same uuid), wherein the first virtual resource is the virtual resource that is hosted by the new host machine, and wherein the second virtual resource is the virtual resource that is hosted by the old host machine (at least paragraph 114-117; source and backup virtual machines);
in response to the identifying, select the first virtual resource to instantiate additional resources for (at least paragraph 116-122; determine storage unit for virtual machine), the selecting being based on multi-dimensional information and comprising:
determining that the second virtual resource is either (a) a most recently instantiated virtual resource as compared to the first virtual resource, or (b) a resource that is connected to a particular storage node (at least paragraph 116, 122-126; determine which virtual machine is the backup and which is the production VM according to information about storage units occupied and connected to the VMs);
determining that the second virtual resource is in a non-running state (at least paragraph 304, 150-157; redundancy incident occurs, stop the redundancy site from replicating the data of the first storage unit to the second storage unit);
determining that the first virtual resource is in a running state (at least paragraph 304, 150-157; cloud application needing redundancy at production site/VM); and
selecting the first virtual resource as the selected virtual resource based on the:
the second virtual resource being at least one of (a) the most recently instantiated virtual resource as compared to the first virtual resource or (b) the resource that is connected to the particular storage node (at least paragraph 116-126; determine which virtual machine is the backup and which is the production VM according to information about storage units occupied and connected to the VMs), and
the non-running state of the second virtual resource and the running state of the first virtual resource (at least paragraph 304, 150-157; production and backup VM state needing recovery), and
instantiate the additional resources for the first virtual resource (at least paragraph 116-126; eg. instruct storage management software to replicate to storage units according to VM).
Wu fails to explicitly disclose cause a virtual resource control system to send a port-add notification to a new host machine to which a virtual resource is being moved; cause the virtual resource control system to send a port-delete notification to an old host machine from which the virtual resource is being moved; determine that the old host machine is not reachable to receive the port-delete notification, resulting in the virtual resource hosted on the old host machine not being deleted from the old host machine. However, the use and advantages for using such a system was well known to one skilled in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention as evidenced by the teachings of Marklund. Marklund discloses, in an analogous art, creating a new IP host to replace an old IP host, the old IP host may be failed or unreachable and assigning the same IP address (port) for the two hosts with the old IP host deprived of its address with the forwarding engine (at least paragraph 48-55). Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art, before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, to incorporate the use of Marklund’s host addressing with Wu as Marklund teaches it is advantageous to reduce the need to inform other addresses of a new IP address, the new IP host simply takes over and assumes the old IP host duties.
As per Claim 2. The computing system of claim 1, wherein the instructions are further executable to cause the computing system to provide network configuration updates to one or more networking resources in the network, the network configuration updates providing networking connectivity to the selected virtual resource (at least paragraph 116-126).
As per Claim 3. Wu fails to explicitly disclose the computing system of claim 1, wherein the instructions are further executable to cause the computing system to selectively determine to provide connectivity to the first virtual resource. However, the use and advantages for using such a system was well known to one skilled in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention as evidenced by the teachings of Becker. Marklund discloses, in an analogous art, that the new IP host replaces the old IP host and replaces the IP address destination with forwarding engines to forward to the new IP host with the same IP address (at least paragraph 48-55). Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art, before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, to incorporate the use of Marklund’s host addressing with Wu as Marklund teaches it is advantageous to reduce the need to inform other addresses of a new IP address, the new IP host simply takes over connectivity with the IP address.
As per Claim 4. The computing system of claim 1, wherein the multi-dimensional information further includes resource port version information (at least paragraph 114-126; eg. “’” of VM11’ of VM1; ‘backup virtual machine VM11'(uuid=11) is correspondingly configured for VM1 (uuid=1)’).
As per Claim 5. The computing system of claim 1, wherein selecting the first virtual resource is further based on metadata that includes, at least in part, statuses of the first and second virtual resources, and wherein the statuses are based at least in part on connectivity to the particular storage node (at least paragraph 116-126; determine which virtual machine is the backup and which is the production VM according to information about storage units occupied and connected to the VMs).
As per Claim 6. Wu fails to explicitly disclose the computing system of claim 1, wherein selecting the first virtual resource is further based on metadata that includes, at least in part: port versions of the first and second virtual resources; and statuses of the first and second virtual resources (at least paragraph 116-126; determine which virtual machine is the backup and which is the production VM according to information about storage units occupied and connected to the VMs).
As per Claim 7. The computing system of claim 1, wherein the first and second virtual resources are virtual machines (at least paragraph 69, 71; virtual machines).
As per Claim 8. The computing system of claim 1, wherein the instructions are further executable to cause the computing system to select network configuration updates for one or both of the first and second virtual resources based at least in part on networking connectivity to be provided to a group of virtual resources that the first virtual resource belongs to (at least paragraph 116-126).
As per Claim 9. The computing system of claim 8, wherein the group of virtual resources is identified based at least on a group identifier of the first virtual resource, the group identifier tracked separately from a virtual resource identifier of the first virtual resource (at least paragraph 116-126; eg. VLAN).
Claim 18 does not, in substance, add or define any additional limitations over claim 1 and therefore is/are rejected for similar reasons, supra. The method steps claimed are performed within claim 1’s system performing the like method via instructions.
Response to Arguments
Applicant’s arguments with respect to claim(s) 1-9, 18 have been considered but are moot because the new ground of rejection does not rely on any reference applied in the prior rejection of record for any teaching or matter specifically challenged in the argument.
See also at least Shilmover par. 94; Forrester par. 50; Pershin par. 53-54.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
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/GREGORY TODD/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2443