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 .
DETAILED ACTION
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and the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e) has been timely paid, the finality of the previous Office action has been withdrawn pursuant to 37 CFR 1.114.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 1/29/26 has been entered.
Response to Arguments
Applicant’s arguments with respect to independent claim(s) 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.
Applicant states: Claims 1, 3-9, 11-15, and 17-20 were rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 101 for allegedly being directed to a judicial exception, or an abstract idea, without significantly more. In particular, the Office Action alleges that the claims are drawn to an abstract idea and that the claims do not recite limitations that are "significantly more" than the abstract idea. Applicant respectfully disagrees with the characterization of the claimed subject matter, and traverses this rejection. However, to advance prosecution, claims 1, 9, and 15 have been amended in a manner that obviates the rejection as discussed during the interview.
Examiner states: Examiner respectfully disagrees. The newly added limitations merely incorporate a new variable (i.e. count of replicas) which is still performed via a mental process limitation of determining. The subsequent limitation regarding provision is nothing more than insignificant extra solution activity which is not a practical application under prong 2. For these reasons, Examiner maintains the 101 rejection.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 101
35 U.S.C. 101 reads as follows: Whoever invents or discovers any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof, may obtain a patent therefor, subject to the conditions and requirements of this title.
Claims 1, 3-9, 11-15, 17-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 because the claimed invention is directed to a judicial exception (i.e., a law of nature, a natural phenomenon, or an abstract idea) without significantly more.
Regarding independent claims the limitations determining locations, selecting, identifying, determining based upon an intersection, and placement, as drafted, recites functions that, under its broadest reasonable interpretation, covers a function that could reasonably be performed in the mind, including with the aid of pen and paper, but for the recitation of generic computer components. That is, the limitations as cited above as drafted, are functions that, under its broadest reasonable interpretation, recite the abstract idea of a mental process.
Thus, these limitation falls within the “Mental Processes” grouping of abstract ideas under Prong 1.
Under Prong 2, this judicial exception is not integrated into a practical application. The claim recites the following additional limitations: processor, memory, storage node, storage node cluster, and storage volumes. The additional elements are recited at a high-level of generality such that it amounts no more than mere instructions to apply the exception using generic computer, and/or mere computer components, MPEP 2106.05(f), and steps of receiving, and provisioning do nothing more than add insignificant extra solution activity to the judicial exception of merely gathering data and a post solution activity. Accordingly, the additional elements do not integrate the recited judicial exception into a practical application and the claim is therefore directed to the judicial exception. See MPEP 2106.05(g).
Under Step 2B, the claims do not include additional elements that are sufficient to amount to significantly more than the judicial exception. As discussed above with respect to integration of the abstract idea into a practical application, the additional elements of processor, memory, storage node, storage node cluster, and storage volumes, amount to no more than mere instructions, or generic computer/computer components to carry out the exception. Furthermore, the limitations directed to receiving, the courts have identified mere data gathering is well-understood, routine and conventional activity. See MPEP 2106.05(d).
The recitation of generic computer instruction and computer components to apply the judicial exception, and mere data gathering do not amount to significantly more, thus, cannot provide an inventive concept. Accordingly, the claims are not patent eligible under 35 USC 101.
Regarding claim 3, 11, 17 the limitations of determining are functions that can be reasonably performed in the human mind, thus, additional mental process defined in the claims. The claim does not include any additional element, thus, no limitation that needs to be analyzed under prong 2 for practical application, or under step 2B for significantly more.
Regarding claim 4, 5, 6, 7, 12, 13, 18, 19 the limitation of provisioning and further description of parameters is considered mere instructions, or generic computer/computer components to carry out the exception Accordingly, the additional element recited in claims fails to provide a practical application under prong 2, or amount to significantly more under step 2B.
Regarding claim 8, 14, 20 the limitations of determining are functions that can be reasonably performed in the human mind, thus, additional mental process defined in the claims. The claim does not include any additional element, thus, no limitation that needs to be analyzed under prong 2 for practical application, or under step 2B for significantly more.
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, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 12, 13, 14, 15, 18, 19, 20 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Katcoff (Pat. No. US 11,704,145) in view of Brooker (Pat. No. 9,503,517) in further view of Majed (NPL 2020, “Replication management in peer-to-peer cloud storage systems”)
Claim 1, 9, 15, Katcoff teaches “a method comprising: receiving a volume provision request to allocate data storage space for a storage volume on a storage node cluster comprising a plurality of storage nodes ([Fig. 5, 502] request received; [Fig. 2] storage node cluster 101 with storage nodes 160, 162; [Col. 2, Lines 37-42] The virtualized computing resource preferences and topology data can be used to determine at which physical server the virtualized computing resources—for example, virtual machine (VM) instances, containers, storage resources, and the like—are launched in response to launch requests.); determining, in response to the volume provision request, locations of replicas of other storage volumes on the plurality of storage nodes; determining, based on the locations of the replicas of the other storage volumes, a placement of replicas of the storage volume on a set of storage nodes of the plurality of storage nodes that minimizes a number of failed storage volumes in an event of a failure of the set of storage nodes wherein the determining the placement comprises: selecting a first storage node for a first replica of the storage volume ([Col. 4, Lines 13-21] This data can be used (e.g., by the placement service) to spread instances of a single customer across failure points, e.g., so that a single customer would not be as impacted by the failure of a (e.g., single) piece of electrical and/or mechanical equipment. Additionally or alternatively, this data can be used to disperse replicas of the same data (e.g., a primary and secondary copy(ies) of a volume) across different infrastructure fault domains.); and provisioning, based on the determining the placement, the replicas of storage volume on the set of storage nodes ([Col. 5, Lines 11-30] In one embodiment, a placement service attempts to (e.g., initially) launch a first virtualized computing resource into a first lineup of physical servers and diversify the placement of a second virtualized computing resource into a second lineup of physical servers. However, there may be no available second lineup (e.g., for that particular customer). Certain embodiments herein then attempt to launch the second virtualized computing resource into the most diverse (e.g., as indicated by the failure correlation factor discussed herein) group of physical servers relative to the group of physical server(s) that the first instances was launched into. There may be multiple levels of granularity for groups (e.g., grouped by their unshared components), for example, a granularity of groups that each have their own respective uninterruptible power supply, a granularity of groups that each have their own respective circuit breaker, a granularity of groups that each have their own respective busbar (or busway), etc. (e.g., in an order from most infrastructure diversity to least infrastructure diversity).)”.
However, Katcoff may not explicitly teach the newly added limitations.
Brooker teaches “wherein the determining the placement comprises: identifying a set of the other storage volumes having replicas provisioned on the first storage node ([Col. 8, Lines 62-65] A block data storage volume, and/or the data blocks thereof, may be distributed and/or replicated across multiple block data storage servers to enhance volume reliability, latency, durability and/or availability. [Col. 3, Lines 4-10] In some embodiments, an indicator is measured to determine whether data storage is or will be sufficiently responsive on a current implementation resource, such as a storage server, to satisfy performance criteria. The indicator may be used to determine whether none, some or all of the data storage should be moved from the current implementation resource to an available implementation resource. (i.e. first storage location identified by Katcoff)) determining, for each other storage node of the plurality of storage nodes, an intersection metric value for the storage volume and the set of the other storage volumes, and determining, based on the intersection metric value for each other storage node, the set of storage nodes; and provisioning, based on a minimum value of the intersection metric value for each other storage node, the storage volume on the set of storage nodes ([Col. 18, Lines 23-54] System diversity may be used to narrow placement decisions during a request for provisioning a storage volume or data set. Selections of available implementation resources, such as storage slots 304 on physical hosts 302 (in FIG. 3) may be further narrowed by system diversity requirements. In FIG. 12, a Venn diagram illustrates selections based on system diversity. A set of six circles represents six groups of available implementation resources sharing a characteristic. The intersection of circles represents shared characteristics of the groups. The groups, for illustrative purposes, represent groups of implementation resources that share a characteristic. The groups include a manufacturer A 1202, operating system B 1204, cooling system C 1206, firmware D 1208, power E 1210 and network F 1212. In placement decisions, it may or may not be desirable to share characteristics depending on a requirement for speed, variance and durability. For example, a cluster computing group program may execute better if the volumes are close in infrastructure and share the same hardware characteristics. A placement decision related to cluster computing may select an intersection 1214 of all groups to satisfy the performance requirements over correlated failure. In another example, correlated failure may be seen to increase with operating system, cooling and firmware, but decrease with manufacturer A, network F, and power E. Therefore to reduce correlated failure (i.e. minimum), if a first system is selected from intersection 1214, a second system may be selected from intersection 1216. In mission critical data storage, diversity may be very important and if a first volume is selected from intersection 1214, a slave volume may be selected from intersection 1218 because a diversity of operating systems may not be important (or available) to the placement decision.)”.
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time the invention was filed to apply the teachings of Brooker with the teachings of Katcoff in order to provide a system that teaches utilizing placement strategies. The motivation for applying Brooker teaching with Katcoff teaching is to provide a system that allows for design choice. Katcoff, Brooker are analogous art directed towards placement of storage. Together Katcoff, Brooker teach every limitation of the claimed invention. Since the teachings were analogous art known at the filing time of invention, one of ordinary skill could have applied the teachings of Brooker with the teachings of Katcoff by known methods and gained expected results.
However, the combination may not explicitly teach utilizing a count of replicas for replica provisioning.
Majed teaches “the intersection metric value based on a count of replicas of the storage volume ([3.1 Determining the most popular data for replication] A minimum replica number for each data file must be determined and kept unchanged. This number has a direct correlation with data availability and users’ desired availability for the data files. In this way, the minimum required replicas for each data are calculated in Eq. (3): …where, • Avth is the desired threshold for data availability which is a decimal number; • Hoff • is the offline hours of the storage nodes which is related to the churn behavior of peers in the P2P structure; • PðFÞ• is the average failure probability of the storage nodes, calculated in Eq. (4):),…the replicas enabling access to the storage volume while at least a storage node of the set of storage nodes is available ([1 Introduction] In this paper, we propose a full dynamic popularitybased replication strategy for P2P cloud storage systems that increases data availability and improves network performance in load balancing and response time. Our strategy aims to select the most popular data for replication and determine the proper nodes for storing the popular data. Additionally, the proposed strategy employs both feature and structural status to select the nodes for storing the popular data.)”.
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time the invention was filed to apply the teachings of Majed with the teachings of Katcoff, Brooker in order to provide a system that teaches utilizing a number of replicas to calculate the provisioning. The motivation for applying Majed teaching with Katcoff, Brooker teaching is to provide a system that allows for design choice. Katcoff, Majed are analogous art directed towards placement of storage. Together Katcoff, Brooker, Majed teach every limitation of the claimed invention. Since the teachings were analogous art known at the filing time of invention, one of ordinary skill could have applied the teachings of Majed with the teachings of Katcoff, Brooker by known methods and gained expected results.
Claim 4, 12, 18, Katcoff teaches “the method of claim 1, wherein the provisioning is further based on additional parameters associated with the plurality of storage nodes ([Col.22, Lines 46-53] In some embodiments, the application of the preferences involves applying properties associated with a placement request, properties associated with candidate servers of a fleet, and possibly other system conditions as a weighted matrix calculation or other type of process that can rank available slots based on a weighted score generated for each available slot and/or physical server.)”.
Claim 5, 13, 19, Katcoff teaches “the method of claim 4, wherein the additional parameters comprise relative loads already provisioned on the plurality of storage nodes ([Col. 24, Lines 27-33] (88) In certain embodiments, the topology data is used as discussed herein to monitor each lineup and enable a placement service to slow/stop load placement on certain lineups that are at (or are approaching) a (e.g., preset) shared topology threshold. In certain embodiments, risk diverse (e.g., load) placement thus makes the load placement process smarter and reduces the risk of unavailability.)”.
Claim 6, Katcoff teaches “the method of claim 4, wherein the additional parameters comprise a characteristic associated with a storage node of the plurality of storage nodes, the characteristic specified in the volume provision request ([Col. 11, Lines 53-57] (39) In certain embodiments, placement service 114 receives a request that causes a launch of first and second virtual machine instances at the circle “1”, for example, with the request indicating a user-specified preference of an instance type(s) of the virtual machine instances.)”.
Claim 7, Katcoff teaches “the method of claim 4, wherein the additional parameters comprise a characteristic associated with a storage node of the plurality of storage nodes, the characteristic optimizing an aspect of the storage volume by being provisioned on the storage node ([Col. 4, Lines 6-27] (18) Certain embodiments herein provide (e.g., to a placement service) the correlated failure points between hosts in a provider network fleet. Certain embodiments herein vend data on (1) the shared infrastructure between hosts and/or (2) the failure correlation factor between hosts due to the shared infrastructure between them (e.g., to the placement service) to be used as rankers in placement optimization tools for customer placement diversification. This data can be used (e.g., by the placement service) to spread instances of a single customer across failure points, e.g., so that a single customer would not be as impacted by the failure of a (e.g., single) piece of electrical and/or mechanical equipment. Additionally or alternatively, this data can be used to disperse replicas of the same data (e.g., a primary and secondary copy(ies) of a volume) across different infrastructure fault domains. In one embodiment, a placement service ingests the provided topology data to filter out capacity that is too risky to launch on or weighs away from certain capacity in favor of other capacity utilizing a ranker (e.g., ranker algorithm), e.g., with the option of falling back to the undesired/less desired location in case of a capacity constraint.)”.
Claim 8, 14, 20, Katcoff teaches “the method of claim 1, wherein: the plurality of storage nodes comprises a first storage node, a second storage node, and a third storage node; the determining the locations of the replicas of the other storage volumes comprises determining that a first replica of a first other storage volume is located on the first storage node and a second replica of the first other storage volume is located on the second storage node; and the determining the placement of the replicas of the storage volume comprises determining that a first replica of the storage node placed on the third storage node and a second replica of the storage node placed on either the first storage node or the second storage node minimizes the number of failed storage volumes in the event of the failure of the third storage node and either the first storage node or the second storage node ([Claim 1] selecting, by the placement service of the cloud provider network, a first virtual machine slot for the first virtual machine instance from a plurality of candidate virtual machine slots of physical servers of the first lineup and a second virtual machine slot for the second virtual machine instance from a plurality of candidate virtual machine slots of physical servers of the second lineup based on the user-specified preference; and causing the first virtual machine slot of a physical server of the first lineup to execute the first virtual machine instance and the second virtual machine slot of a physical server of the second lineup to execute the second virtual machine instance. [Claim 3] 3. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, further comprising: placing a first replica of a dataset on one or more physical servers of a third lineup of the plurality of lineups based on the topologies for the plurality of lineups)”.
Claim/s 3, 11, 17 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Katcoff, Brooker, Majed in view of Dhoolam (Pat. No. 9,826,041)
Claim 3, 11, 17 Katcoff may not explicitly teach the limitation.
Dhoolam teaches “the method of claim 1, wherein: the determining the intersection metric value comprises determining, for a particular storage node, an intersection count of replicas of the set of the other storage volumes provisioned on the particular storage node; and the determining the set of storage nodes comprises selecting one or more storage nodes having the minimum value of the intersection metric values for each other storage node ([Col. 14, Lines 16-39] If the slave partition is placed on the second server, the first server pair count will be incremented by one, for a total of four. In such a case, if the first server pair fails in a correlated failure, four partitions will be lost. Whereas, if the slave partition is placed on the third server, the first server pair count remains at three and the second server pair count is incremented by one to a total of one, effectively resulting, in the event the first server pair fails in a correlated failure, that at most three partitions will be lost, and, in the event the second server pair fails in a correlated failure, at most one partition will be lost. Consequently, a call to GetSlaves( ), may recommend placing the slave partition on the third server over the second server because a worst-case correlated failure would impact fewer partitions (the first server would likely not be included in the set of placements 106 due to a server diversity constraint, because the master is already placed or recommended to be placed on the first server). Thus, an overall placement strategy may be to keep the number of partition replica pairs on different server pairs to a minimum, so that in an unlikely event of multiple server failure, the number of volumes impacted is minimized. An alternate expression of the strategy may be to spread volume partitions between the most possible servers within the same rack.)”.
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time the invention was filed to apply the teachings of Dhoolam with the teachings of Katcoff, Brooker, Majed in order to provide a system that teaches utilizing different values in determining placement strategies. The motivation for applying Dhoolam teaching with Katcoff, Brooker, Majed teaching is to provide a system that allows for design choice. Katcoff, Brooker, Majed, Dhoolam are analogous art directed towards placement of storage. Together Katcoff, Brooker, Majed, Dhoolam teach every limitation of the claimed invention. Since the teachings were analogous art known at the filing time of invention, one of ordinary skill could have applied the teachings of Dhoolam with the teachings of Katcoff, Brooker, Majed by known methods and gained expected results.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to WYNUEL S AQUINO whose telephone number is (571)272-7478. The examiner can normally be reached 9AM-5PM EST M-F.
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/WYNUEL S AQUINO/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2199