DETAILED ACTION
Notice of Pre-AIA or AIA Status
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 Arguments
Applicant's arguments filed 7/14/2025 have been fully considered but they are not persuasive.
Applicant states (pp. 35) that Kolishchak does not teach limitations containing element “read-only state”. Examiner respectfully disagrees.
Kolishchak teaches a system for controlling privileged operations, where a kernel module at a client intercepts file operations, and notifies a privileged daemon. The privileged daemon performs an authorization policy check to determine if the client is authorized to perform the intercepted operation (Kolishchak: [0008]). File access is denied (i.e., not accessible) if the operation has standard user privilege (Kolishchak: [0008], col. 1, ln. 34-37). Otherwise, file access is authorized (i.e., accessible) if the operation is a privileged operation (Kolishchak: [0008], col. 2, ln. 7-9). For example, an admin process has higher read-and-write privilege, whereas a user process has much lower read-only privilege (i.e., read-only state) (Kolishchak: [0002]).
Applicant further states (pp. 36) that Pawlowski does not teach “the special block access object being independent from and not accessible via the file level layer and the special block access object not being associated with a respective file of the file system,” Examiner respectfully disagrees.
In Pawlowski, the file-based access protocol (i.e., file serving protocol) supports access (i.e., file access requests) to files and directories [0025]. The block-based protocol supports access to blocks on vdisks (a special type of files [0022]) using SCSI – a device-independent I/O interface (i.e., network interface), which allows different (i.e., independent) devices (i.e., not associated with files) to attach (i.e., mount) to the storage appliance [0027].
Applicant further states that Vaitheeswaran does not teach “wherein the file system management section is configured to provide the special block access object of the object-based file system for write access by the search index application to write data into a search index file or search index database stored in the special block access object while the object-based file system is set to the read-only state.” This is taught instead by combining Pawlowski and Lightsail with Vaitheeswaran.
Vaitheeswaran teaches a search server containing an indexer (i.e., search index application) that indexes objects (i.e., files) in an object repository (i.e., file system). The indexer identifies objects in the repository that are newly created or updated (i.e., file access requests) and extracts information to update (i.e., write) the search index (Vaitheeswaran: [0023]). Search index may be stored in any common storage device (e.g., special block access object) (Vaitheeswaran: [0028]).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to apply the teachings of Vaitheeswaran to Pawlowski and Lightsail. One having ordinary skill in the art would have found motivation to incorporate the search index application of Vaitheeswaran on top of block storage devices of Lightsail using the multi-protocol storage appliance of Pawlowski.
In summary, the cited prior art of record combined teaches the argued limitations of independent claims 1 and 13-15.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 112
The following is a quotation of the first paragraph of 35 U.S.C. 112(a):
(a) IN GENERAL.—The specification shall contain a written description of the invention, and of the manner and process of making and using it, in such full, clear, concise, and exact terms as to enable any person skilled in the art to which it pertains, or with which it is most nearly connected, to make and use the same, and shall set forth the best mode contemplated by the inventor or joint inventor of carrying out the invention.
Claims 1-2, 4-5, 8 and 11-15 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(a), as failing to comply with the written description requirement. Claims 1 and 13-15 contain subject matter which was not described in the specification in such a way as to reasonably convey to one skilled in the relevant art that the inventor or a joint inventor, at the time the application was filed, had possession of the claimed invention. For example, limitation “the special block access object being independent from and not accessible via the file level layer and the special block access object not being associated with a respective file of the file system” is not defined in the instant specification.
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 1-2, 4-5 and 11-15 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Pawlowski et al. US patent application 2004/0030668 [herein “Pawlowski”], in view of Creating and attaching a block storage disk to your Windows Server instance in Amazon Lightsail. https://lightsail.aws.amazon.com/ls/docs/en_us/articles/create-and-attach-additional-block-storage-disks-windows, pp. 1-6, 2018 [herein “Lightsail”] and Kolishchak. US patent application 2018/0336360 [herein “Kolishchak”], and further in view of Vaitheeswaran et al. US patent application 2012/0078859 [herein “Vaitheeswaran”].
Claim 1 recites “An apparatus for managing an object-based file system, comprising: a network interface configured to communicably connect to one or more client computers via a communication network; and a file system management section, implemented at least in part by a processor, configured to manage the object-based file system comprising plural file objects in an object level layer, each file object being associated with a respective file in a file level layer of the file system, wherein the file system management section is configured to serve file access requests of a file serving protocol received via the interface;”
Pawlowski teaches a multi-protocol storage appliance serving both file and block protocol access to information stored on storage devices [0020], including a storage operating system (i.e., host operating system) operable on a computer (i.e., host computer) [0035] that logically organizes the information as a hierarchical structure of file, directory and virtual disk (vdisk) storage objects (i.e., object level layer) [0021]. Pawlowski enables file-based access to files and directories (i.e., file level layer), and block-based access to vdisks [0011].
Claim 1 further recites “wherein the file system management section is further configured to provide a special block access object of the object-based file system being mountable as a block storage device, the special block access object being independent from and not accessible via the file level layer and the special block access object not being associated with a respective file of the file system,”
In Pawlowski, the file-based access protocol (i.e., file serving protocol) supports access (i.e., file access requests) to files and directories [0025]. The block-based protocol supports access to blocks on vdisks (a special type of files [0022]) using SCSI – a device-independent I/O interface (i.e., network interface), which allows different (i.e., independent) devices (i.e., not associated with files) to attach (i.e., mount) to the storage appliance [0027].
Pawlowski does not disclose claim element “mountable as a block storage device”; however, Lightsail creates and attaches (i.e., mounts) block storage disks (i.e., block storage device) (Lightsail: pp. 1/6) as a volume (i.e., special block access object) in an industry standard file system such as NTFS (Lightsail: pp. 5/6).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to apply the teachings of Lightsail to Pawlowski. One having ordinary skill in the art would have found motivation to incorporate block storage disks of Lightsail as the vdisk storage objects in a file-based storage system using the multi-protocol storage appliance of Pawlowski.
Pawlowski does not disclose limitation “wherein the file system management section is configured to create the special block access object at the object level layer of the object-based file system upon determining that the object-based file system is set to a read-only state, wherein the special block access object is accessible to the object-based file system for performing modifications but is not accessible to a user for performing write access in the read-only state via the file level layer,”
However, Kolishchak teaches a system for controlling privileged operations, where a kernel module at a client intercepts file operations, and notifies a privileged daemon. The privileged daemon performs an authorization policy check to determine if the client is authorized to perform the intercepted operation (Kolishchak: [0008]). File access is denied (i.e., not accessible) if the operation has standard user privilege (Kolishchak: [0008], col. 1, ln. 34-37). Otherwise, file access is authorized (i.e., accessible) if the operation is a privileged operation (Kolishchak: [0008], col. 2, ln. 7-9). For example, an admin process has higher read-and-write privilege, whereas a user process has much lower read-only privilege (i.e., read-only state) (Kolishchak: [0002]).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to apply the teachings of Kolishchak to Pawlowski and Lightsail. One having ordinary skill in the art would have found motivation to constrain read/write access to block storage disks of Lightsail as privileged operations of Kolishchak through the multi-protocol storage appliance of Pawlowski.
Claim 1 further recites “wherein the file system management section is configured to provide the special block access object of the object-based file system being mountable as a block storage device by a host operating system of a host computer, wherein the file system management section is configured to provide the special block access object of the object-based file system for write access by an external application executing on the host operating system of the host computer independently of the file level layer,”
The block-based protocol of Pawlowski supports access to blocks using the SCSI I/O (i.e., read/write) interface on the block storage device attached to the storage appliance [0027]. The network adapter couples the storage appliance with a plurality of clients (i.e., external application) locally or remotely [0024].
Pawlowski does not disclose limitation “wherein the external application is a search index application configured to create and/or update a search index based on file access requests issued to read data from and write data to files associated with objects of the object-based file system, and wherein the file system management section is configured to provide the special block access object of the object-based file system for write access by the search index application to write data into a search index file or search index database stored in the special block access object while the object-based file system is set to the read-only state.”
However, Vaitheeswaran teaches a search server containing an indexer (i.e., search index application) that indexes objects (i.e., files) in an object repository (i.e., file system). The indexer identifies objects in the repository that are newly created or updated (i.e., file access requests) and extracts information to update (i.e., write) the search index (Vaitheeswaran: [0023]). Search index may be stored in any common storage device (e.g., special block access object) (Vaitheeswaran: [0028]).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to apply the teachings of Vaitheeswaran to Pawlowski and Lightsail. One having ordinary skill in the art would have found motivation to incorporate the search index application of Vaitheeswaran on top of block storage devices of Lightsail using the multi-protocol storage appliance of Pawlowski.
Claims 13-15 are analogous to claim 1, and are similarly rejected.
Claim 2 recites “An apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the file system management section comprises a block serving protocol server section configured to serve block access requests of a block serving network protocol directed to the block storage device of the special block access object of the object-based file system.”
The block-based protocol (i.e., block serving network protocol) of Pawlowski supports access to blocks (i.e., block access requests) on vdisks (i.e., special block access object) attached to the storage appliance [0027].
Claim 4 recites “An apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the file system management section includes a file serving application executed on the host operating system of a host computer.”
The multi-protocol storage appliance (i.e., file serving application) of Pawlowski includes a storage operating system (i.e., host operating system) operable on a computer (i.e., host computer) [0035] that logically organizes the information as a hierarchical structure of files, directories and vdisk storage objects [0021].
Claim 5 recites “An apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the file system management section is configured to provide the special block access object of the object-based file system to the host operating system of the host computer so as to format the block storage device provided by the special block access object in the host operating system's file system format.”
The multi-protocol storage appliance of Pawlowski includes a storage operating system (i.e., host operating system) operable on a computer (i.e., host computer) [0035] that logically organizes the information as a hierarchical structure of files, directories and vdisk storage objects [0021].
Pawlowski and Lightsail teach claim 1, where Lightsail creates (i.e., formats) and attaches block storage disks (i.e., block storage device) (Lightsail: pp. 1/6) as a volume (i.e., special block access object) in an industry standard file system such as NTFS (Lightsail: pp. 5/6).
Claim 11 recites “An apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the file system management section is configured to create the special block access object with associated object metadata.”
The SCSI target module of Pawlowski translates between LUNs and vdisks [0013]. It transposes a SCSI request into a message representing a file system operation, together with metadata such as the type of operation (e.g., read or write), a pathname and a file name of the vdisk object (i.e., special block access object) [0062].
Claim 12 recites “An apparatus according to claim 11, wherein the object metadata of the special block access object is indicative of a block access type of the special block access object; and/or the object metadata of the special block access object is indicative of a unique object number reserved for objects of a block access type.”
The SCSI target module of Pawlowski translates between LUNs (i.e., unique object number) and vdisks [0013]. It transposes a SCSI request into a message representing a file system operation, together with metadata such as the type of operation (i.e., block access type), a pathname and a file name of the vdisk object (i.e., special block access object) [0062].
Claim 8 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Pawlowski as applied to claim 1 above, in view of Lightsail and Kolishchak, and further in view of Shilane et al. US patent 8,631,052 [herein “Shilane”].
Claim 8 recites “An apparatus according to claim 1, wherein each object of the object-based file system is associated with one or more respective storage blocks of a block level layer, and the file system management section includes a deduplication process section configured to perform a deduplication process at the block level layer, including calculating hash values of respective storage blocks of the block level layer and deduplicating storage blocks based on matching hash values, wherein the external application is a dedupe index application configured to create and/or update a dedupe index based on hash values shared by the deduplication process section via inter-process communication, and wherein the file system management section is configured to provide the special block access object of the object-based file system for write access by the dedupe index application to write into a dedupe index file or dedupe index database stored in the special block access object.”
The block-based protocol of Pawlowski supports access to blocks using the SCSI I/O (i.e., read/write) interface on the block storage device (i.e., special block access object) attached to the storage appliance [0027]. The network adapter couples (i.e., inter-process communication) the storage appliance with a plurality of clients (i.e., dedupe index application) locally or remotely [0024].
Pawlowski and Lightsail teach claim 1, but do not disclose this claim; however, Shilane teaches a deduplicated storage system where files are partitioned into one or more chunks (i.e., blocks), and a fingerprint (i.e., hash value) is generated for each chunk. Unique chunks are stored in chunk storage (i.e., block level layer), whereas fingerprints are added to an index (i.e., dedupe index file/database). A file has a recipe for reconstruction, which consists of a list of fingerprints and metadata about unique chunks (Shilane: 1:40-52).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to apply the teachings of Shilane to Pawlowski and Lightsail. One having ordinary skill in the art would have found motivation to incorporate the deduplicated storage system of Shilane, whose chunk storage is provided by block storage devices of Lightsail using the multi-protocol storage appliance of Pawlowski.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure. For example, Lange et al. US patent application 2019/0251256 teaches privileged execution to maintain clear separation of code access between system and user modes.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to SHELLY X. QIAN whose telephone number is (408)918-7599. The examiner can normally be reached Monday - Friday 8-5 PT.
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/BORIS GORNEY/Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2154
/SHELLY X QIAN/Examiner, Art Unit 2154