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 .
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and the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e) has been timely paid, the finality of the previous Office action has been withdrawn pursuant to 37 CFR 1.114.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 10/03/2025 has been entered.
This action is responsive to the Applicant’s amendments filed on 10/03/2025. Claims 1-20 remain pending in the application. Claims 1, 6, 11, and 16 have been amended. Any examiner’s note, objection, and rejection not repeated is withdrawn due to Applicant’s amendment.
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statement (IDS) submitted on 07/12/2022 is in compliance with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.97. Accordingly, the information disclosure statement is being considered by the examiner.
Examiner’s Note
The Examiner cites particular columns, paragraphs, figures, and line numbers in the references as applied to the claims below for the convenience of the applicant. Although the specified citations are representative of the teachings in the art and are applied to the specific limitations within the individual claim, other passages and figures may also apply. It is respectfully requested that, in preparing responses, the Applicant fully consider the references in its entirety as potentially teaching all or part of the claimed invention, as well as the context of the passage as taught by the prior art or disclosed by the Examiner.
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, 6-8, and 16-18 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Gupta et al. (US 20220188172 A1) hereafter Gupta in view of Adam et al. (US 20220357954 A1) hereafter Adam, further in view of Sasaki (US 20230305750 A1).
Regarding claim 1, Gupta teaches:
An apparatus for deployment of a virtual computing cluster, the apparatus comprising: interface circuitry (Paragraphs 82-83; “A network adapter card or network interface in each computing/processing device receives computer readable program instructions from the network” and “electronic circuitry including, for example, programmable logic circuitry, field-programmable gate arrays (FPGA), or programmable logic arrays (PLA) may execute the computer readable program instructions”) to access a request for deployment of a Kubernetes virtual computing cluster (Paragraphs 49-50; “Universal placer 450 operates to receive a request to deploy workload(s) associated with project 470”, where Paragraph 47 further discloses “In general, universal public cloud 410 acts as a managed service managing a plurality of clusters (e.g., Kubernetes® clusters)”.);
and processor circuitry including one or more of: at least one of a central processor unit, a graphics processor unit, or a digital signal processor, the at least one of the central processor unit, the graphics processor unit, or the digital signal processor having control circuitry to control data movement within the processor circuitry, arithmetic and logic circuitry to perform one or more first operations corresponding to instructions, and one or more registers to store a result of the one or more first operations, the instructions in the apparatus (Paragraph 85; “These computer readable program instructions may be provided to a processor of a computer, or other programmable data processing apparatus to produce a machine” covers the central processor unit of the “at least one of” list of elements. A generic computer processor necessarily includes one or more registers for storing the results of arithmetic and logic operations , as registers are fundamental components of processor architectures. Therefore, the processor of Gupta inherently includes the claimed registers.);
a Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA), the FPGA including logic gate circuitry, a plurality of configurable interconnections, and storage circuitry, the logic gate circuitry and the plurality of the configurable interconnections to perform one or more second operations, the storage circuitry to store a result of the one or more second operations (Paragraph 83; “In some embodiments, electronic circuitry including, for example, programmable logic circuitry, field-programmable gate arrays (FPGA), or programmable logic arrays (PLA) may execute the computer readable program instructions by utilizing state information of the computer readable program instructions to personalize the electronic circuitry, in order to perform aspects of the present invention.”);
the processor circuitry to perform at least one of the first operations, the second operations, or the third operations to instantiate: blueprint manager circuitry to create a request for the requested deployment of the Kubernetes virtual computing cluster associated with a project (Paragraph 75; “In step 560, universal placer 450 generates workload deployment scenarios using pod specifications of the selected cluster. The workload deployment scenario generated by universal placer 450 includes: (i) a deployment configuration, which describes the desired state of a particular component of the application as a pod template”, where the workload scenario is effectively a request for deployment of a Kubernetes virtual computing cluster. Paragraphs 49-50 confirm that this request is associated with a project. “a tenant at tenant computing device 440 creates an organization, such as organization 460 and creates a project, such as project 470, within the organization 460, where the project includes workload requirements and a request to deploy workload(s) for deployment of project 470. Details associated with organization 460 and project 470 may be stored to a repository on universal public cloud 410”, where “Universal placer 450 operates to receive a request to deploy workload(s) associated with project 470”.);
zone management circuitry to identify a zone in which the request is to be deployed, the zone identified based on at least one tag specified in the request (Paragraph 55; “NFRs may include, but are not limited to, data residency location and end-user location requirements. NFRs may include a selection of single-zone (i.e., resources deployed to one geographic region) or multizone (i.e., resources spread across data centers in multiple zones to increase fault tolerance)”, where the zone selection corresponds to identification of a zone where the cluster is to be deployed.);
and resource manager circuitry to deploy a resource based on the request, the resource created on a provider instance associated with the identified zone (Paragraph 50; “Universal placer 450 operates to receive a request to deploy workload(s) associated with project 470... and/or deploy necessary workload(s) for project 470”, where the universal placer receiving a request and deploying workloads associated with the request corresponds to deploying a resource based on the request. Paragraph 55 shows that identification of a zone is involved in resource deployment, “NFRs may include a selection of single-zone (i.e., resources deployed to one geographic region)”.);
on a provider instance associated with the identified zone (Paragraph 55; “NFRs may include a selection of single-zone (i.e., resources deployed to one geographic region”.).
Gupta does not teach Application Specific Integrated Circuitry (ASIC) including logic gate circuitry to perform one or more third operations; a blueprint.
However, Adam teaches:
Application Specific Integrated Circuitry (ASIC) including logic gate circuitry to perform one or more third operations (Paragraph 179; “Additionally, a processor can refer to an integrated circuit, an application specific integrated circuit (ASIC), a digital signal processor (DSP), a field programmable gate array (FPGA)”);
a blueprint (Paragraph 32; “one or more declarative deployment manifests that are associated with the computing application and/or that are associated with the computing objects that are downstream of the computing application. In various cases, a declarative deployment manifest that corresponds to a given computing object can be any suitable electronic file that specifies configuration parameters that define the given computing object and/or that specifies dependencies of the given computing object”, where the declarative deployment manifest corresponds to the applicant’s blueprint).
Gupta and Adam are considered to be analogous to the claimed invention because they are in the same field of cluster management. Therefore, it would have been obvious to someone of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified Gupta to incorporate the teachings of Adam to utilize an ASIC and have had the request for deployment be in the form of a blueprint. The use of an ASIC is a known method in the art that would have yielded the predictable result of high performance and efficient processing. The use of a blueprint in place of a request is a known method for abstracting system configurations, dependencies, and deployment behavior. The substitution of a blueprint in place of a deployment request represents the use of a known technique to perform the same function of deployment initiation while yielding the predictable result of consistency and automation without changing the fundamental operation of the system.
Gupta in view of Adam does not teach the resource management circuit being configured to create namespaces and permissions within the namespaces.
However, Sasaki teaches:
the resource management circuit being configured to create namespaces and permissions within the namespaces (Paragraph 78; “The namespace management unit 3311 manages a plurality of namespaces. The namespace management unit 3311 creates a namespace. The namespace management unit 3311 also deletes a namespace. In addition, the namespace management unit 3311 manages the size and the identifier of a namespace”, where the namespace management unit acts as the resource management circuit and creates namespaces. Further, Paragraph 86 discloses “The namespace access management unit 3312 manages the access permission information”, in which it a person of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to have one unit perform both namespace creation and permission creation for the namespaces to optimize resource usage.).
Gupta, Adam, and Sasaki are considered to be analogous to the claimed invention because they are in the same field of cluster management. Therefore, it would have been obvious to someone of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified Gupta in view of Adam to incorporate the teachings of Sasaki and have a resource management circuit configured to create namespaces and permissions. A person of ordinary skill in the art would have recognized that the use of Kubernetes namespaces and rule-based access control are known mechanisms for tenant isolation and access control, and applying these known techniques on the identified zone of Gupta would have yielded the predictable result of secure and organized allocation of computing resources to requesting users.
and to grant the requesting user access to the created resource (Paragraph 52; “In step 510, universal placer 450 receives a request from a tenant to deploy workload(s) of a project”. Paragraph 77 discloses creating the resource, “create[s] the project on the selected cluster, and deploy[s] workload(s) on one or more pods of the cluster”. Paragraph 79 discloses “Universal placer 450 maintains an externalized tenant mapping within various clouds 420 ad clusters 430 by, upon specification of a new project, recording (i) a tenant to project to cloud to mesh to cluster mapping”, where the requesting tenant corresponds to the requesting user and, on creation of a new project, the creation of the record of the mapping of each tenant to each particlar created resource corresponds to granting the requesting user access to the created resource.).
Regarding claim 6, Gupta teaches:
An apparatus to deploy a Kubernetes cluster, the apparatus comprising:
at least one memory (Paragraph 37; “Program/utility 40, having a set (at least one) of program modules 42, may be stored in memory 28”);
machine readable instructions (Paragraph 83; “Computer readable program instructions for carrying out operations of the present invention may be assembler instructions, instruction-set-architecture (ISA) instructions, machine instructions, machine dependent instructions”);
and processor circuitry to at least one of instantiate or execute the machine readable instructions to: create a request for a requested deployment of a Kubernetes cluster associated with a project (Paragraph 75; “In step 560, universal placer 450 generates workload deployment scenarios using pod specifications of the selected cluster. The workload deployment scenario generated by universal placer 450 includes: (i) a deployment configuration, which describes the desired state of a particular component of the application as a pod template”, where the workload scenario is effectively a request for deployment of a Kubernetes virtual computing cluster. Paragraphs 49-50 confirm that this request is associated with a project. “a tenant at tenant computing device 440 creates an organization, such as organization 460 and creates a project, such as project 470, within the organization 460, where the project includes workload requirements and a request to deploy workload(s) for deployment of project 470. Details associated with organization 460 and project 470 may be stored to a repository on universal public cloud 410”, where “Universal placer 450 operates to receive a request to deploy workload(s) associated with project 470”.);
identify a zone in which the request is to be deployed, the zone identified based on at least one tag specified in the request (Paragraph 55; “NFRs may include, but are not limited to, data residency location and end-user location requirements. NFRs may include a selection of single-zone (i.e., resources deployed to one geographic region) or multizone (i.e., resources spread across data centers in multiple zones to increase fault tolerance);
deploy a resource based on the request, the resource created on a provider instance associated with the identified zone (Paragraph 50; “Universal placer 450 operates to receive a request to deploy workload(s) associated with project 470... and/or deploy necessary workload(s) for project 470”, where the universal placer receiving a request and deploying workloads associated with the request corresponds to deploying a resource based on the request. Paragraph 55 shows that identification of a zone is involved in resource deployment, “NFRs may include a selection of single-zone (i.e., resources deployed to one geographic region)”.).
Gupta does not teach a blueprint.
However, Adam teaches:
a blueprint (Paragraph 32; “one or more declarative deployment manifests that are associated with the computing application and/or that are associated with the computing objects that are downstream of the computing application. In various cases, a declarative deployment manifest that corresponds to a given computing object can be any suitable electronic file that specifies configuration parameters that define the given computing object and/or that specifies dependencies of the given computing object”, where the declarative deployment manifest corresponds to the applicant’s blueprint).
Gupta and Adam are considered to be analogous to the claimed invention because they are in the same field of cluster management. Therefore, it would have been obvious to someone of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified Gupta to incorporate the teachings of Adam to have the request for deployment be in the form of a blueprint. The use of a blueprint in place of a request is a known method for abstracting system configurations, dependencies, and deployment behavior. The substitution of a blueprint in place of a deployment request represents the use of a known technique to perform the same function of deployment initiation while yielding the predictable result of consistency and automation without changing the fundamental operation of the system.
Gupta in view of Adam does not teach create namespaces and permissions within the namespaces.
However, Sasaki teaches:
create namespaces and permissions within the namespaces (Paragraph 78; “The namespace management unit 3311 manages a plurality of namespaces. The namespace management unit 3311 creates a namespace. The namespace management unit 3311 also deletes a namespace. In addition, the namespace management unit 3311 manages the size and the identifier of a namespace”, where the namespace management unit acts as the resource management circuit and creates namespaces. Further, Paragraph 86 discloses “The namespace access management unit 3312 manages the access permission information”, in which it a person of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to have one unit perform both namespace creation and permission creation for the namespaces to optimize resource usage.);
Gupta, Adam, and Sasaki are considered to be analogous to the claimed invention because they are in the same field of cluster management. Therefore, it would have been obvious to someone of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified Gupta in view of Adam to incorporate the teachings of Sasaki and have a resource management circuit configured to create namespaces and permissions. A person of ordinary skill in the art would have recognized that the use of Kubernetes namespaces and rule-based access control are known mechanisms for tenant isolation and access control, and applying these known techniques on the identified zone of Gupta would have yielded the predictable result of secure and organized allocation of computing resources to requesting users.
Gupta further teaches:
and to grant the requesting user access to the created resource (Paragraph 52; “In step 510, universal placer 450 receives a request from a tenant to deploy workload(s) of a project”. Paragraph 77 discloses creating the resource, “create[s] the project on the selected cluster, and deploy[s] workload(s) on one or more pods of the cluster”. Paragraph 79 discloses “Universal placer 450 maintains an externalized tenant mapping within various clouds 420 ad clusters 430 by, upon specification of a new project, recording (i) a tenant to project to cloud to mesh to cluster mapping”, where the requesting tenant corresponds to the requesting user and, on creation of a new project, the creation of the record of the mapping of each tenant to each particlar created resource corresponds to granting the requesting user access to the created resource.).
Claim 16 recites similar limitations as those of claim 6, additionally reciting a non-transitory computer-readable storage medium. Gupta teaches:
a non-transitory computer-readable storage medium (Paragraph 81; “The computer readable storage medium can be a tangible device that can retain and store instructions for use by an instruction execution device... A computer readable storage medium, as used herein, is not to be construed as being transitory signals per se”).
Claim 16 is rejected for similar reasons as those of claim 6.
Regarding claim 2, Gupta in view of Adam, further in view of Sasaki teach the apparatus of claim 1. Gupta teaches:
wherein the zone management circuitry is to cause display of an alert in response to a determination that there are no zones associated with the project (Paragraph 63; “In some embodiments, universal placer 450 may determine that no candidate clusters exist. In such an embodiment, universal placer 450 may return an error or notification to the tenant, such that the tenant is able to amend their workload requirements in order to potentially identify suitable clusters to implement the workload(s) of their project.”, where the return of an error or notification corresponds to the display of an alert, and the determination that no candidate clusters exist corresponds to the determination that there are no zones associated with the project.).
Claim 7 recites similar limitations as those of claim 2. Claim 7 is rejected for similar reasons as those of claim 2.
Claim 17 recites similar limitations as those of claim 2. Claim 17 is rejected for similar reasons as those of claim 2.
Regarding claim 3, Gupta in view of Adam, further in view of Sasaki teach the apparatus of claim 1. Gupta teaches:
wherein the zone management circuitry is to determine whether any zones associated with the project match a tag specified in the blueprint (Paragraph 75; “The workload deployment scenario generated by universal placer 450 includes: (i) a deployment configuration, which describes the desired state of a particular component of the application as a pod template, (ii) one or more replication controllers, which contain a point-in-time record of the state of a deployment configuration as a pod template, and (iii) one or more pods, which represent an instance of a particular version of an application... In some embodiments, there may be multiple deployment scenarios. In other embodiments, there may only be a single deployment scenario”, where each scenario corresponds to a zone that matches the tags specified in the configuration.).
Claim 8 recites similar limitations as those of claim 3. Claim 8 is rejected for similar reasons as those of claim 3.
Claim 18 recites similar limitations as those of claim 3. Claim 18 is rejected for similar reasons as those of claim 3.
Claims 11-13 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Gupta in view of Adam, further in view of Sasaki, further in view of Narayanaswamy et al. (US 11503038 B1) hereafter Narayanaswamy.
Claim 11 recites similar limitations as those of claim 6, additionally reciting a non-transitory computer-readable storage medium, and wherein the zone includes a provider id property, a provider type property, and a project assignment property, and the resource manager circuitry creates the resource on a provider instance associated with the provider id and provider type of the identified zone and associated with the project assignment.
Gupta teaches:
a non-transitory computer-readable storage medium (Paragraph 81; “The computer readable storage medium can be a tangible device that can retain and store instructions for use by an instruction execution device... A computer readable storage medium, as used herein, is not to be construed as being transitory signals per se”).
Gupta in view of Adam, further in view of Sasaki does not teach wherein the zone includes a provider id property, a provider type property, and a project assignment property, and the resource manager circuitry creates the resource on a provider instance associated with the provider id and provider type of the identified zone and associated with the project assignment.
However, Narayanaswamy teaches:
wherein the zone includes a provider id property (Col. 11 lines 23-25; “(a) Instance_id for AWS is the account information, (b) instance_id for GCP is project_id, and (c) instance_id for Azure is a subscription” where the instance id corresponds to the provider id because it identifies the specific provider instance on which resources are created), a provider type property (Col. 11, lines 30-32; “The service provider field indicates the vendor details of these Open API specifications, in some cases. For example, amazonaws.com, googleapis.com, azure.com, etc.”, where the service provider field identifies the type of provider and corresponds to the claimed provider type property which distinguishes between different provider platforms), and a project assignment property (Col. 11, lines 20-32; “instance_id for GCP is project_id” where the prior art equates a project id with the cloud instance identifier which assigns resources to a specific project context, thereby corresponding to the project assignment property), and the resource manager circuitry creates the resource on a provider instance associated with the provider id and provider type of the identified zone (Col. 11, lines 28-40; “For example, eks.ap-southeast-1.amazonaws.com, ec2.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com, compute.googleapis.com, management.azure.com, etc. Endpoint URL is a URL to the target host and is a unique identifier used to locate a resource on the Internet.” And “The service provider field indicates the vendor details of these Open API specifications”, where the endpoint UTL identifies where the resource is located and the service provider field identifiers which provider hosts the instance, showing that the resources are created on a provider instance associated with a provider id and type. Col. 11 lines 59-61 further disclose that one such activity utilizing the properties may be creation, “FIG. 7, FIG. 8, FIG. 9, FIG. 10A and FIG. 10B list the template for the activities, including but not limited to upload, download, delete, create, etc.”) and associated with the project assignment (Col. 11, lines 20-25; “For example: (a) Instance_id for AWS is the account information, (b) instance_id for GCP is project_id”. By tying instance id to project id and enforcing policies at that level, resources are created within and governed by a specific project assignment, corresponding to a resource being associated with the project assignment of an identified zone).
Gupta, Adam, Sasaki, and Narayanaswamy are considered to be analogous to the claimed invention because they are in the same field of cluster management. Therefore, it would have been obvious to someone of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified Gupta in view of Adam further in view of Sasaki to incorporate the teachings of Narayanaswamy and associate resource creation with a provider identifier, provider type, and project assignment. A person of ordinary skill in the art would have recognized identification and policy mechanisms to be a known method in the art that would yield the predictable result of correctly provisioning and governing resources within the intended cloud environment.
Claim 11 is rejected for similar reasons as those of claim 6.
Regarding claim 12, Gupta in view of Adam, further in view of Sasaki, further in view of Narayanaswamy teach the non-transitory machine readable storage medium of claim 11. Gupta teaches:
wherein instructions cause the processor circuitry to cause display of an alert in response to a determination that there are no zones associated with the project (Paragraph 63; “In some embodiments, universal placer 450 may determine that no candidate clusters exist. In such an embodiment, universal placer 450 may return an error or notification to the tenant, such that the tenant is able to amend their workload requirements in order to potentially identify suitable clusters to implement the workload(s) of their project.”, where the return of an error or notification corresponds to the display of an alert, and the determination that no candidate clusters exist corresponds to the determination that there are no zones associated with the project.).
Regarding claim 13, Gupta in view of Adam, further in view of Sasaki, further in view of Narayanaswamy teach the non-transitory machine readable storage medium of claim 11. Gupta teaches:
wherein instructions cause the processor circuitry to determine whether any zones associated with the project match a tag specified in the blueprint (Paragraph 75; “The workload deployment scenario generated by universal placer 450 includes: (i) a deployment configuration, which describes the desired state of a particular component of the application as a pod template, (ii) one or more replication controllers, which contain a point-in-time record of the state of a deployment configuration as a pod template, and (iii) one or more pods, which represent an instance of a particular version of an application... In some embodiments, there may be multiple deployment scenarios. In other embodiments, there may only be a single deployment scenario”, where each scenario corresponds to a zone that matches the tags specified in the configuration.).
Claims 4, 9, 14, and 19 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Gupta in view of Adam, further in view of Sasaki, further in view of Devereaux et al. (US 20140279581 A1) hereafter Devereaux.
Regarding claim 4, Gupta in view of Adam, further in view of Sasaki teaches the apparatus of claim 3. Gupta teaches:
a zone (Paragraph 55; “NFRs may include a selection of single-zone (i.e., resources deployed to one geographic region)”).
Gupta in view of Adam, further in view of Sasaki does not teach wherein the zone management circuitry is to choose the zone with the highest priority in response to the determination that no zones associated with the project match the tag specified in the blueprint.
However, Devereaux teaches:
wherein the zone management circuitry is to choose the zone with the highest priority in response to the determination that no zones associated with the project match the tag specified in the blueprint (Paragraph 68; “selecting a virtual machine 107 from the pool 109 can be based on the resources required for a given task. For example, if a new customer requests a rendering job using Maya.RTM. running on Linux, the master control 152 can be configured to search for an existing virtual machine 107 on which the requisite resources are installed. If an exact match is not available, the master control engine 152 can be configured to select a close match”, Devereaux further teaches that the master control may perform resource distribution depending on job priority if a match is not found in Paragraph 77).
Gupta, Adam, Sasaki, and Devereaux are considered to be analogous to the claimed invention because they are in the same field of virtual machine management. Therefore, it would have been obvious to someone of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified Gupta in view of Adam, further in view of Sasaki to incorporate the teachings of Devereaux and select the zone with the highest priority in response to a determination that there is no zone associated with a project matching a tag specified in the blueprint. A person of ordinary skill in the art would recognize that selection of the best possible option in response to no perfect match being found is a known method in the art, the implementation of which would yield the predictable result of enhancing user convenience by providing the closest matched set of resources, such as a zone, for deployment rather than throwing an error and forcing a user to modify deployment variables.
Claim 9 recites similar limitations as those of claim 4. Claim 9 is rejected for similar reasons as those of claim 4.
Claim 19 recites similar limitations as those of claim 4. Claim 19 is rejected for similar reasons as those of claim 4.
Claim 5, 10, and 20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Gupta in view of Adam, further in view of Sasaki, further in view of Devereaux, further in view of McKee et al. (US 20210397466 A1) hereafter McKee.
Regarding claim 5, Gupta in view of Adam, further in view of Sasaki, further in view of Devereaux teach the apparatus of claim 4. Gupta in view of Adam, further in view of Sasaki, further in view of Devereaux does not teach wherein the zone management circuitry is to choose the zone with the highest priority that matches the tags in response to a determination that more than one zone matches the tag specified in the blueprint.
However, McKee teaches:
wherein the zone management circuitry is to choose the zone with the highest priority that matches the tags in response to a determination that more than one zone matches the tag specified in the blueprint (Paragraph 56; “At block 930, the bare metal machine is selected from the set of candidate machines having an excess resource metric indicative of a least amount of excess resources and that also minimizes a probability the excess resources will be needed to satisfy another request during the lifetime of the request. According to one embodiment, this minimization involves minimizing the sum of the probability metrics of the excess resources of the selected bare metal machine.”).
Gupta, Adam, Sasaki, Devereaux, and McKee are considered to be analogous to the claimed invention because they are in the same field of cluster management. Therefore, it would have been obvious to someone of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified Gupta in view of Adam, further in view of Sasaki, further in view of Devereaux to incorporate the teachings of McKee and have selected the zone with the highest priority matching tags in response to a determination that more than one zone matched the tags specified. A person of ordinary skill in the art would have recognized the selection of the most optimal option from a list of possible options to be a known method, and the implementation of this method on the selection of a zone would have yielded the predictable result of optimal zone selection based on prioritization criteria.
Claim 10 recites similar limitations as those of claim 5. Claim 10 is rejected for similar reasons as those of claim 5.
Claim 20 recites similar limitations as those of claim 5. Claim 20 is rejected for similar reasons as those of claim 5.
Claim 14 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Gupta in view of Adam, further in view of Sasaki, further in view of Narayanaswamy, further in view of Devereaux.
Regarding claim 14, Gupta in view of Adam, further in view of Sasaki, further in view of Narayanaswamy teaches the non-transitory machine readable storage medium of claim 13. Gupta teaches:
a zone (Paragraph 55; “NFRs may include a selection of single-zone (i.e., resources deployed to one geographic region)”).
Gupta in view of Adam, further in view of Sasaki, further in view of Narayanaswamy does not teach wherein the zone management circuitry is to choose the zone with the highest priority in response to the determination that no zones associated with the project match the tag specified in the blueprint.
However, Devereaux teaches:
wherein instructions cause the processor circuitry to choose the zone with the highest priority that matches the tags in response to a determination that no zones associated with the project match the tag specified in the blueprint (Paragraph 68; “selecting a virtual machine 107 from the pool 109 can be based on the resources required for a given task. For example, if a new customer requests a rendering job using Maya.RTM. running on Linux, the master control 152 can be configured to search for an existing virtual machine 107 on which the requisite resources are installed. If an exact match is not available, the master control engine 152 can be configured to select a close match”, Devereaux further teaches that the master control may perform resource distribution depending on job priority if a match is not found in Paragraph 77).
Gupta, Adam, Sasaki, Narayanaswamy, and Devereaux are considered to be analogous to the claimed invention because they are in the same field of virtual machine management. Therefore, it would have been obvious to someone of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified Gupta in view of Adam, further in view of Sasaki, further in view of Narayanaswamy to incorporate the teachings of Devereaux and select the zone with the highest priority in response to a determination that there is no zone associated with a project matching a tag specified in the blueprint. A person of ordinary skill in the art would recognize that selection of the best possible option in response to no perfect match being found is a known method in the art, the implementation of which would yield the predictable result of enhancing user convenience by providing the closest matched set of resources, such as a zone, for deployment rather than throwing an error and forcing a user to modify deployment variables.
Claim 15 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Gupta in view of Adam, further in view of Sasaki, further in view of Narayanaswamy, further in view of Devereaux, further in view of McKee.
Regarding claim 15, Gupta in view of Adam, further in view of Sasaki, further in view of Narayanaswamy, further in view of Devereaux teach the non-transitory machine readable storage medium of claim 14. Gupta in view of Adam, further in view of Sasaki, further in view of Narayanaswamy, further in view of Devereaux teach the apparatus of claim 4. Gupta in view of Adam, further in view of Sasaki, further in view of Devereaux does not teach wherein the zone management circuitry is to choose the zone with the highest priority that matches the tags in response to a determination that more than one zone matches the tag specified in the blueprint.
However, McKee teaches:
wherein instructions cause the processor circuitry to choose the zone with the highest priority that matches the tags in response to a determination that more than one zone matches the tag specified in the blueprint (Paragraph 56; “At block 930, the bare metal machine is selected from the set of candidate machines having an excess resource metric indicative of a least amount of excess resources and that also minimizes a probability the excess resources will be needed to satisfy another request during the lifetime of the request. According to one embodiment, this minimization involves minimizing the sum of the probability metrics of the excess resources of the selected bare metal machine.”).
Gupta, Adam, Sasaki, Narayanaswamy, Devereaux, and McKee are considered to be analogous to the claimed invention because they are in the same field of cluster management. Therefore, it would have been obvious to someone of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified Gupta in view of Adam, further in view of Sasaki, further in view of Devereaux to incorporate the teachings of McKee and have selected the zone with the highest priority matching tags in response to a determination that more than one zone matched the tags specified. A person of ordinary skill in the art would have recognized the selection of the most optimal option from a list of possible options to be a known method, and the implementation of this method on the selection of a zone would have yielded the predictable result of optimal zone selection based on prioritization criteria.
Response to Amendment
Applicant’s arguments filed 10/03/2025 with respect to rejections of claims 1-20 under 35 U.S.C. 101 have been fully considered and are not persuasive. Applicant’s arguments are summarized as follows:
The prior art of record does not disclose the newly amended limitations of independent claims 1, 6, 11, and 16.
Dependent claims are submitted as allowable for at least the above reasons.
The Examiner respectfully disagrees.
Applicant’s arguments with respect to independent claims 1, 6, 11, and 16 have been considered but are moot because the new ground of rejection relies on new references applied for the teaching or matter specifically challenged in the argument.
Independent claims 1, 6, 11, and 16 remain rejected for the reasons stated above. Therefore, contrary to Applicant's arguments, because the dependent claims depend from an unpatentable claim and does not add limitations that overcome the rejection, it likewise remains rejected.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure. Chadwell et al. (US 20150081893 A1) discusses the query and monitoring of components followed by utilizing a priority order to select the condition with the highest priority for execution.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to KENNETH P TRAN whose telephone number is (571)272-6926. The examiner can normally be reached M-TH 4:30 a.m. - 12:30 p.m. PT, F 4:30 a.m. - 8:30 a.m. PT, or at Kenneth.Tran@uspto.gov.
Examiner interviews are available via telephone, in-person, and video conferencing using a USPTO supplied web-based collaboration tool. To schedule an interview, applicant is encouraged to use the USPTO Automated Interview Request (AIR) at http://www.uspto.gov/interviewpractice.
If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, April Blair can be reached at (571) 270-1014. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
Information regarding the status of published or unpublished applications may be obtained from Patent Center. Unpublished application information in Patent Center is available to registered users. To file and manage patent submissions in Patent Center, visit: https://patentcenter.uspto.gov. Visit https://www.uspto.gov/patents/apply/patent-center for more information about Patent Center and https://www.uspto.gov/patents/docx for information about filing in DOCX format. For additional questions, contact the Electronic Business Center (EBC) at 866-217-9197 (toll-free). If you would like assistance from a USPTO Customer Service Representative, call 800-786-9199 (IN USA OR CANADA) or 571-272-1000.
/KENNETH P TRAN/ Examiner, Art Unit 2196
/APRIL Y BLAIR/ Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2196