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 .
Claims 1, 10, and 15 are currently amended. No new claims have been added. No claims have been canceled. Claims 1-20 are currently pending for examination.
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and the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e) has been timely paid, the finality of the previous Office action has been withdrawn pursuant to 37 CFR 1.114.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 9/24/2026 has been entered.
Response to Arguments
Applicant’s arguments, pgs. 8-9, with respect to the amended claims 1, 10, and 15 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. The new grounds of rejection under 35 USC 103 rely upon Dinechin (US 20060036830 A1) and Yin (US 20130185716 A1) to teach the amended limitation of the independent claims.
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, 3, 4, 8, 9, 10, 12, 13, 15, 16, 19, and 20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Ganguly (US 20210271506 A1) in view of Dinechin (US 20060036830 A1) in further view of Yin (US 20130185716 A1) in further view of Borkar (US 20200351183 A1).
As per claim 1, Ganguly discloses:
A computer system comprising: a processor; and memory configured to provide computer program instructions to the processor, the computer program instructions including an execution metrics tool (“As depicted, the device 1800 includes a bus 1812, which provides communications between computer processor(s) 1814, memory 1816, persistent storage 1818, communications unit 1820, and input/output (I/O) interface(s) 1822.", 0119 ; “As noted above, metrics may be collected by metric collecting and reporting agents 1030a-j. There is one metric collecting and reporting agent 1030a-j per node in VIM POD 1020.", 0080 ; Examiner Note: the metric collecting and reporting agents together equate to an execution metrics tool)
an execution metrics tool configured to: receive, by a virtualization service provider from a virtualization service client, a command configuring a computer system emulator that executes the virtualization service client, (“Returning to FIG. 3, during operation, the centralized management node 305 may be used for deploying OpenStack (e.g., facilitating distribution of images and other deployment procedures) or another form of cloud infrastructure, and after deployment, management node 305 may monitor the deployments using various tools.", 0034 ; "During operation, such processes may begin with a Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) request from a compute server under deployment.", 0034 ; “With reference now made to FIGS. 6A and 6B, depicted therein is a call flow diagram 600 illustrating a message exchange for installing an operating system (OS) on a node via a centralized management node 305. More specifically, call flow diagram 600 illustrates the installation of an OS on a DHCP client which is embodied as a compute server or POD arranged within a regional data center, such as a compute node arranged within POD 310a of regional data center 302a of FIG. 3.”, 0041 ; Examiner Note: the management node containing the metric collecting and reporting agents receiving a DHCP request equates to the execution metrics tool receiving a request to configure an emulator. The installation of an OS on a client of the service by the central management node equates to a virtualization service provider executing a virtualization service client)
wherein the virtualization service provider is executing in a virtualization stack (“According to example embodiments, centralized cloud infrastructure provisioning and management are provided. According to such example embodiments, a first virtual machine executing on a centralized management node provides a first image file to a first computing entity arranged within a first point of delivery, wherein the first image file comprises at least one of a first boot configuration file or a first ramdisk file. A second virtual machine executing on the centralized management node provides a second image file to a second computing entity arranged within a second point of delivery different from the first point of delivery. “, 0024 ; see fig.11- central management node (1115) consists of VMs 1140a-1140f, comprising the virtualization stack)
execute the command by causing a virtualization service provider running in a virtualization stack to execute a plurality of virtualization service operations on behalf of a virtualization service client of the computer system emulator ("In order to provide management features for each of PODs 310a-f, management node 305 may be configured to execute management virtual machines (VMs) 325a-f. According to this example embodiment, each of virtual machines 325a-f performs functions corresponding to management nodes 105a-f of FIG. 1 for a respective one of PODs 310a-f.", 0038 ; Examiner Note: functions corresponding to management nodes equate to virtualization service operations)
generate an aggregated execution metric by aggregating execution metrics for the plurality of virtualization service operations over a current interval in the memory (“VIM-MON architecture 1000 employs metric aggregation into a time-series database (TSDB) 1012 installed on the management node 1010.", 0079 ; "These metrics are then read (“scraped”) by the event monitoring server 1011 running on the management node 1010 at regular intervals (e.g., a default scraping interval of 15 seconds).", 0080 ; Examiner Note: the aggregated metrics equate to aggregated execution metrics)
in response to expiration of the current interval, push the aggregated execution metrics to a structure in the memory storing historical aggregated execution metrics. (“These metrics are then read (“scraped”) by the event monitoring server 1011 running on the management node 1010 at regular intervals (e.g., a default scraping interval of 15 seconds). Metrics that are scraped are received on the management node 1010 and are then stored in the local TSDB 1012.", 0080 ; Examiner Note: the TSDB (time-series database) equates to a memory which stores historical aggregated execution metrics.)
Ganguly discloses the above limitations of claim 1, but does not explicitly disclose the virtualization service provider running on a parent partition receiving a command configuring a computer system emulator from a virtualization service client running on a child partition.
However, Dinechin discloses:
intercept, by an execution metrics tool of a virtualization service provider from a virtualization service client running in a parent partition on a host computer, a command sent by a virtualization service client running in a child partition on the host computer to the virtualization service provider, the command configuring a computer system emulator that executes the virtualization service client (“The virtual-machine monitor generally arranges to intercept and emulate the instructions and events which behave differently under virtualization, so that the virtual-machine monitor can provide virtual-machine behavior consistent with the virtual machine definition to higher-level software programs, such as guest operating systems and programs that run in program-execution environments provided by guest operating systems.”, 0005 “certain instructions that need to be emulated may not be privileged, and therefore do not automatically fault when executed at guest-operating-system privilege”, 0021 ; “The first enclosing circle 202 represents a virtual-machine monitor, a software layer underlying the traditional operating-system software layer of the computer system. The virtual-machine monitor provides virtual-machine interfaces 210 and 212. The virtual machine can be considered to include a virtual processor, virtual physical memory, and virtual mass-storage devices, e.g., 214, 216, 218, respectively. An operating system software layer can be considered to encapsulate each virtual machine, such as operating systems 220 and 222 represented by circles in FIG. 2. “, 0024 ; Examiner Note: the virtual machine monitor equates to a virtualization service provider running in a parent partition , the software layers providing guest operating systems equate to child partitions – this is supported by the non-privileged status of the guest OS/client)
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art, before the effective filing date, to combine the metrics and recordings agents of Ganguly with the interception of a command configuring a virtual machine emulator of Dinechin in order to increase the convenience of data protection within the virtualization service with page-level access rights (Dinechin, [0041]).
Ganguly in view of Dinechan discloses the above limitations of claim 1, but does not explicitly disclose the virtualization service provider being executed in a virtualization stack of the parent partition.
However, Yin discloses:
the virtualization service provider is executing in a virtualization stack (“According to one aspect of the invention, the hypervisor may have a parent partition that runs a virtualization stack having direct access to the underlying hardware, wherein the parent partition may create child partitions that can host any suitable guest operating system. The virtualization stack may include various components that run in a kernel mode or privileged processor ring, including a VMBus that provides a logical channel to redirect requests and responses between virtual devices in the child partitions and the parent partition to manage inter-partition communication between the parent and child partitions. The virtualization stack may further include various device drivers associated with virtual machines running in the child partitions, a kernel to support the guest operating system instance running in the parent partition, and a virtualization service provider that connects to the VMBus and handles device access requests from the child partitions. “, 0008)
The system of Ganguly in view of Dinechin in further view of Yin would intercept, with the metrics and recording agents of Ganguly, a command configuring a virtual machine emulator (Dinechan, [0005]). This combination would provide metrics and recording agents within the parent partition. It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art, before the effective filing date, to combine the teachings of Ganguly in view of Dinechin with those of Yin in order to provide hypervisor-level replication, switchover and failover, and rewind and recovery capabilities associated with virtual machines running on the virtualized production server in order to reduce deployment time and cost (Yin, [0016]).
Ganguly in view of Dinechin in further view of Yin fully discloses the above limitations of claim 1, but does not disclose groups of virtualization service operations which are assigned a unique identifier and for which metrics are aggregated.
However, Borkar discloses:
determine the plurality of virtualization service operations are organized into one or more groups, wherein an operation classifier of the execution metrics tool determines each of the one or more groups is assigned a unique identifier that maps an execution call corresponding to the command to the plurality of virtualization service operations, wherein the unique identifier indicates that execution metrics of plurality of virtualization service operations are to be aggregated based on the unique identifier (“In some embodiments, the component identifier 310 may determine a type of the virtual service of each of the identified components. For example, in some embodiments, the component identifier 310 may determine that a particular component is one of a web application (e.g., web UI), a network application (e.g., SaaS application), a virtual application (e.g., hosted or virtual desktop), remote file access service, or the like.”, 0068 ; “In one aspect, this disclosure is directed to a method for indicating virtual workspace performance on a graphical user interface of a computer system. The method includes: identifying, by a computer system, one or more components of a virtual workspace executed on behalf of a user of the computer system, and analyzing, by the computer system, a plurality of performance measurements of the identified one or more components of the virtual workspace. For each of the identified one or more components, the method further includes determining, by the computer system, an aggregated performance measurement for the component based on the plurality of performance measurements of the component, comparing the aggregated performance measurement to a threshold, selecting a graphical indicator from a plurality of predetermined graphical indicators responsive to the comparison, and rendering, within a graphical user interface of the computer system, an identifier of the component and the selected graphical indicator.”, 0006 ; Examiner Note: the types of virtual services equate to groups of virtualization service operations. The identifier/icon which is assigned to the component equates to an ID which maps the call to the virtualization service operations as each component is executed on behalf of a user)
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art, before the effective filing date to combine the system of Ganguly in view of Dinechin in further view of Yin with that of Borkar in order to provide identifiers and indicators of components which enable the user to prioritize tasks that can be performed using components with better expected experiences, rather than attempting to perform tasks that require the use of components with poor expected experiences (Borkar, [0074]).
As per claim 3, Ganguly in view of Dinechin in further view of Yin in further view of Borkar fully discloses the limitations of claim 1.
Furthermore, Ganguly discloses:
the execution metrics tool is configured to store and update the execution metrics in a portion of the memory that is allocated to processes of the virtualization stack (“Metrics that are scraped are received on the management node 1010 and are then stored in the local TSDB 1012", 0080 ; Examiner Note: the management node handles processes of the virtual stack)
As per claim 4, Ganguly in view of Dinechin in further view of Yin in further view of Borkar fully discloses the limitations of claim 1.
Furthermore, Ganguly discloses:
the memory comprises random access memory, flash memory, or virtual memory, and the execution metrics tool is configured to store and update the execution metrics in a portion of the random access memory, the flash memory, or the virtual memory. (“In the depicted embodiment, memory 1816 includes RAM 1824 and cache memory 1826.", 0120 ; Examiner Note: memory 1816 is used to store execution metrics)
As per claim 8, Ganguly in view of Dinechin in further view of Yin in further view of Borkar fully discloses the limitations of claim 1.
Furthermore, Ganguly discloses:
the command instructs creation or deletion of the computer system emulator ("Installers of cloud infrastructure devices, such as OpenStack® installers, are used to deploy cloud infrastructure services on baremetal servers using automation tools. Such installers typically utilize one or a group of servers as “installer database servers” and these nodes are typically referred to as “management nodes” in a point-of-delivery (POD), such as an OpenStack POD", 0026 ; “In various embodiments, the centralized management node 305 may be deployed either as a virtual machine (VM) or microservice based on availability of cloud resources.”, 0034 ; Examiner Note: installation and deployment of a VM equates to the creation of a computer system emulator.)
As per claim 9, Ganguly in view of Dinechin in further view of Yin in further view of Borkar fully discloses the limitations of claim 1.
Furthermore, Ganguly discloses:
the plurality of virtualization service operations configures hardware or software on behalf of the virtualization service client ("the OS image may be broken into two images, including first and second stage image files, “stage1.img” and “stage2.img”, respectively. The content of the “stage-1.img” file may be selected based on server hardware and firmware configurations. For example, the “stage1.img” image file may contain one or more of the following non-exhaustive list of files: a bootloader file, a boot configuration file, a flinuz file, and a random access memory (RAM) or ramdisk file. The “stage2.img” image file may include the actual OS file (e.g., Windows, Linux, etc.) to be installed on the server.", 0041 ; Examiner Note: installing a boot configuration file equates to configuring hardware on behalf of a virtualization service client.)
As per claim 10, it is a computer storage media (Ganguly discloses : “Memory 1816 and persistent storage 1818 are computer readable storage media. In the depicted embodiment, memory 1816 includes RAM 1824 and cache memory 1826. In general, memory 1816 can include any suitable volatile or non-volatile computer readable storage media. Instructions for the Centralized Management, Provisioning and Monitoring Software 1825 may be stored in memory 1816 or persistent storage 1818 for execution by processor(s) 1814.”, [0120]) claim with substantially the same limitations as claim 1, and as such, it is rejected for substantially the same reasons.
As per claim 12, it is a computer storage media claim with substantially the same limitations as claim 3, and as such, it is rejected for substantially the same reasons.
As per claim 13, it is a computer storage media claim with substantially the same limitations as claim 4, and as such, it is rejected for substantially the same reasons.
As per claim 15, it is a method claim with substantially the same limitations as claim 1, and as such, it is rejected for substantially the same reasons.
As per claim 16, it is a method claim with substantially the same limitations as claim 3, and as such, it is rejected for substantially the same reasons.
As per claim 19, it is a method claim with substantially the same limitations as claim 8, and as such, it is rejected for substantially the same reasons.
As per claim 20, it is a method claim with substantially the same limitations as claim 9, and as such, it is rejected for substantially the same reasons.
Claims 2 and 11 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Ganguly (US 20210271506 A1) in view of Dinechin (US 20060036830 A1) in further view of Yin (US 20130185716 A1) in further view of Borkar (US 20200351183 A1) in further view of Pijewski (US 20140280970 A1).
As per claim 2, Ganguly in view of Dinechin in further view of Yin in further view of Borkar fully discloses the limitations of claim 1, but does not disclose the storing of execution metrics in a location allocated to OS processes.
However, Pijewski discloses;
the execution metrics tool is configured to store and update the execution metrics in a portion of the memory that is allocated to operating system processes (“the usage metric for a tenant is stored in kernel memory of the filesystem", clm.20 ; Examiner Note: usage metrics equate to execution metrics. The location of the kernel equates to the portion of memory allocated to operating system processes)
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art, before the effective filing date, to combine the teachings of Ganguly in view of Dinechin in further view of Yin in further view of Borkar with the storing of metrics in the kernel of Pijewski, in order to provide the system with direct access to the information stored in the aggregated metric files without requiring any layers of abstraction- thereby allowing the system to more easily diagnose performance issues.
As per claim 11, it is a computer storage media claim with substantially the same limitations as claim 2, and as such, it is rejected for substantially the same reasons.
Claims 5 and 18 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Ganguly (US 20210271506 A1) in view of Dinechin (US 20060036830 A1) in further view of Yin (US 20130185716 A1) in further view of Borkar (US 20200351183 A1) in further view of Alshawabkeh (US 11375012 B2).
As per claim 5, Ganguly in view of Dinechin in further view of Yin in further view of Borkar fully discloses the limitations of claim 1, but does not disclose aggregating separate execution metrics for each operation of a virtualization service.
However, Alshawabkeh discloses:
the execution metrics tool is configured to aggregate the execution metrics separately for each type of virtualization service operation of the plurality of virtualization service operations (“defining a metric related to a feature of interest, the metric specifying a type of operation by the OS on global memory that is to be identified and collected by each of the autonomous infrastructure modules; pushing the defined metric to each autonomous infrastructure module; monitoring, by each respective autonomous infrastructure module, respective OS operations on the respective global memory on each respective storage system; processing the monitored respective OS operations,", claim 1 ; Examiner Note: a type of operation of the OS equates to a type of virtualization service operation)
The system of Ganguly in view of Dinechin in further view of Yin in further view of Borkar in further view of Alshawabkeh would be able to aggregate execution metrics separately for the various operations of the virtualization service. It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art, before the effective filing date, to combine the teachings of Ganguly in view of Dinechin in further view of Yin in further view of Borkar with those of Alshawabkeh in order to provide the system with the ability to quickly and easily diagnose problems associated with various operations of a virtualization service, or at least determine the operation associated with a performance issue.
As per claim 18, it is a method claim with substantially the same limitations as claim 5, and as such, it is rejected for substantially the same reasons.
Claims 6 and 17 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Ganguly (US 20210271506 A1) in view of Dinechin (US 20060036830 A1) in further view of Yin (US 20130185716 A1) in further view of Borkar (US 20200351183 A1) in further view of Chraim (US 12093709 B1).
As per claim 6, Ganguly in view of Dinechin in further view of Yin in further view of Borkar fully discloses the limitations of claim 1, but does not disclose aggregating separate execution metrics for each operation of a virtualization service.
However, Chraim discloses:
the execution metrics tool is configured to aggregate the execution metrics for a plurality of types of virtualization service providers operating in a plurality of layers of the virtualization stack (“a provider network may include multiple hosts each of which may be accessible through a network, and the provider network may include one more metric monitors which may determine performance metrics for the network of each host". Col.4, lines 7-11 ; Examiner Note: a host equates to a virtualization service provider, and performance metrics equate to execution metrics)
The system of Ganguly in view of Dinechin in further view of Yin in further view of Borkar in further view of Chraim would be capable of aggregating performance, or execution, metrics for a plurality of virtualization service providers, or hosts in a virtualization environment. It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art, before the effective filing date, to combine the teachings of Ganguly in view of Dinechin in further view of Yin in further view of Borkar with those of Chraim to provide a virtualization environment with the ability to quickly and easily associate an identified performance issue with specific virtualization service provider through analyzing service specific execution metric logs.
As per claim 17, it is a method claim with substantially the same limitations as claim 6, and as such, it is rejected for substantially the same reasons.
Claims 7 and 14 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Ganguly (US 20210271506 A1) in view of Dinechin (US 20060036830 A1) in further view of Yin (US 20130185716 A1) in further view of Borkar (US 20200351183 A1) in view of Jeyakumar (US 20190132190 A1).
As per claim 7, Ganguly in view of Dinechin in further view of Yin in further view of Borkar fully discloses the limitations of claim 1, but does not disclose limiting the age of historical aggregated execution metrics.
However, Jeyakumar discloses:
the execution metrics tool is configured to limit an age of the historical aggregated execution metrics stored in the memory by deleting expired data of the historical aggregated execution metrics from the memory ("In another example, controller 102 deletes old/individual metrics after a certain amount of time has passed from generation thereof, where the certain amount of time is a configurable parameter determined based on experiments and/or empirical studies.", 0089)
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art, before the effective filing date, to combine the teachings of Ganguly in view of Dinechin in further view of Yin in further view of Borkar with those of Jeyakumar to provide a virtualization service which does not waste memory resources by storing execution metric logs which exceed an age limit- i.e., would not be useful in the diagnosis of current performance issues.
As per claim 14, it is a computer storage media claim with substantially the same limitations as claim 7, and as such, it is rejected for substantially the same reasons.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure:
Nowatzki (US 20150121365 A1) – discloses a method for tracing emulated execution orders of non-native instructions based on natively executing code. Comprises maintaining a jump history, and for each of the non-native jump instructions, accessing non-native program code to determine one or more non-native instructions executed between the non-native jump instruction and last executed non-native jump instruction- and finally aggregating the instructions into a trace.
Li (US 20200260343 A1) – discloses a method for communication node scanning and association in a wireless communication network which comprises the determining of virtual BSS (basic service set) groups.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to ROSS MICHAEL VINCENT whose telephone number is (703)756-1408. The examiner can normally be reached Mon-Fri 8:30AM-5:30PM.
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/R.M.V./
Examiner, Art Unit 2196
/APRIL Y BLAIR/Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2196
