DETAILED ACTION
This Office Actions is in response to communication (Amendment) filed on 10/10/2025.
Claims 1 – 20 are pending. Claims 1 – 3, and 11 – 13 are non-elected. Claims 4 and 14 are in independent form. Claims 5 – 10 and 15 – 20 are amended. This action is Final.
Applicant’s election without traverse of Claims 4 – 10 and 14 – 20 in the reply filed on 04/11/2025 is acknowledged.
Applicant’s election of Claims 4 – 10 and 14 – 20 in the reply filed on 04/11/2025 is acknowledged. Because applicant did not distinctly and specifically point out the supposed errors in the restriction requirement, the election has been treated as an election without traverse (MPEP § 818.01(a)).
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 .
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statement (IDS) submitted on 10/10/2025 is in compliance with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.97. Accordingly, the information disclosure statement is being considered by the examiner.
Response to Amendment
This Office Action is in response to the applicant’s remarks and arguments filed on 10/10/2025.
Claims 5 – 10 and 15 – 20 were amended. Claims 1 – 20 remain pending in the application. Claims 1 – 3, and 11 – 13 are withdrawn from further consideration. Claims 4 – 10 and 14 – 20 are being considered on the merits.
Response to Arguments
The applicant’s remarks and/or arguments, filed on 10/10/2025 have been fully considered with the following result(s).
The examiner is entitled to give claim limitations their broadest reasonable interpretation in light of the specification. See MPEP 2111 [R-1] Interpretation of Claims-Broadest Reasonable Interpretation. The applicant always has the opportunity to amend the claims during prosecution, and broad interpretation by the examiner reduces the possibility that the claim, once issued, will be interpreted more broadly than is justified. In re Prater, 162 USPQ 541,550-51 (CCPA 1969)
Response to Claim Objections
Applicant’s argument filed on 10/10/2025 regarding the Claim Objections have been fully considered and they are persuasive. The Claim Objections have been withdrawn.
Response to 35 U.S.C. § 103 Remarks
Applicant’s argument filed on 10/10/2025 regarding 35 U.S.C § 103 rejections have been fully considered but they are not persuasive.
Regarding the remark on Page 10 that “As such, Abbondanzio is not relied on for elements (a), (b), or (c). In fact, the Office Action admits that Abbondanzio fails to teach these elements. Yet, Abbondanzio is relied on for teaching "after steps (b) and (c)," performing certain of the steps of element (d). However, if Abbondanzio does not perform steps (b) and (c), it cannot be relied on to "initiate a maintenance interval and during the maintenance interval," and perform elements (d)(1) and (d)(2).”
The examiner fully considers and respectfully disagree, and would like to point out that: in response to applicant's argument that the examiner's conclusion of obviousness is based upon improper hindsight reasoning, it must be recognized that any judgment on obviousness is in a sense necessarily a reconstruction based upon hindsight reasoning. But so long as it takes into account only knowledge which was within the level of ordinary skill at the time the claimed invention was made, and does not include knowledge gleaned only from the applicant's disclosure, such a reconstruction is proper. See In re McLaughlin, 443 F.2d 1392, 170 USPQ 209 (CCPA 1971). It is unclear for the examiner what are the reasons why “Abbondanzio does not perform steps (b) and (c), it cannot be relied on to initiate a maintenance interval and during the maintenance interval”. The examiner would like to point out that, with the current claim language, under BRI, there are no requirements or correlations that steps (b), (c), and (d) must be tied together. In addition, with the current claim language, it is very reasonable that Abbondanzio discloses the feature (d), because “FIGS. 5A-5C are a flowchart of a method 500 for performing a maintenance operation on a cloud computing node”.
Regarding the remark on Page 10 that “The Office Action provides a motivation for combining Abbondanzio and Muthukrishnan with respect to elements (a) and (b), but that motivation fails to address why a POSA would modify Abbondanzio to perform elements (a) and (b) before element (d) (the latter element for which element Abbondanzio is relied on for teaching).” And the remark “Further in that regard, while the rejection relies on Muthukrishnan for disclosing a first portion of element (a), it relies on Weissman for disclosing the latter portion of element (a) (i.e., "each virtual machine of the pod having a pod membership attribute denoting membership in the pod"). But the Office Action offers no rationale why a POSA would modify what Muthukrishnan is relied on for teaching as part of element (a) with Weissman to arrive at element (a). Rather, the Office Action only provides a motivation to combine the latter portion of element (a), purportedly taught by Weissman, with Abbondanzio. But this is not a case where Muthukrishnan and Weissman are relied upon for unrelated features of a claim element. In this case, element (a) is parsed so that it fits two unrelated disclosures in two different references, even while the latter portion of element (a) relates to the first portion.” And on page 11 “No reason is given why a POSA would be motivated to modify Abbondanzio to include the element (d)(2)(ii), if taught by Weissman, to the purported teaching of Abbondanzio of "while one or more of the hosts in the set are vacant and one or more of the virtual machines of the set are uninstalled." And “Accordingly, a POSA would not be motivated to combine Abbondanzio and Weissman in the first place.”
The examiner fully considers, and respectfully disagree, and would like to point out that: in response to applicant’s argument that there is no teaching, suggestion, or motivation to combine the references, the examiner recognizes that obviousness may be established by combining or modifying the teachings of the prior art to produce the claimed invention where there is some teaching, suggestion, or motivation to do so found either in the references themselves or in the knowledge generally available to one of ordinary skill in the art. See In re Fine, 837 F.2d 1071, 5 USPQ2d 1596 (Fed. Cir. 1988), In re Jones, 958 F.2d 347, 21 USPQ2d 1941 (Fed. Cir. 1992), and KSR International Co. v. Teleflex, Inc., 550 U.S. 398, 82 USPQ2d 1385 (2007). In this case, the examiner provided the appropriate motivation for a POSA to modify or combine the teaching of Abbondanzio with Muthukrishnan, to come up with the claim invention, as follow: “because by doing that, the system can ensure that pod resources are kept together and isolated from unrelated workloads, which helps to improve reliability, consistency, safe and efficient maintenance, and reduce the risk of configuration errors and service disruption.” Or/And the motivation to modify or combine the teaching of Abbondanzio with Muthukrishnan, to come up with the claim invention, as follow: “this would help the system can clearly track which VMs belong together and which hosts are reserved for them, and as only the correct VMs are reinstalled on the corresponding hosts and preventing interference from unrelated workloads, which allows the computing system to enforce strict placement rules during maintenance, and helps maintain pod isolation, system integrity, and service continuity.”
Regarding the remark on page 11 that “On the other hand, Weissman is relied upon for element (d)(2)(ii) "prevent installation of any virtual machine which is not a member of the pod in any vacant host of the set by comparing a pod membership of each virtual machine proposed for installation to the dedication attribute of the host and blocking installation if the pod membership attribute of the virtual machine is null or differs from the dedication attribute of the host." But, as shown above in the table, element (d)(2)(ii) is recited as a second step based on the condition of element (d)(2) of "while one or more of the hosts in the set are vacant and one or more of the virtual machines of the set are uninstalled." This relationship between (d)(2) and (d)(2)(ii) is glossed over and not addressed in the Office Action. No reason is given why a POSA would be motivated to modify Abbondanzio to include the element (d)(2)(ii), if taught by Weissman, to the purported teaching of Abbondanzio of "while one or more of the hosts in the set are vacant and one or more of the virtual machines of the set are uninstalled." And on Page 12 “Lastly, it is respectfully submitted that Abbondanzio does not disclose "(2) while one or more of the hosts in the set are vacant and one or more of the virtual machines of the set are uninstalled, (i) perform a maintenance operation on the vacant hosts of the set, the uninstalled virtual machines, or both." ....... Abbondanzio does not disclose that a maintenance operation is performed "while one or more of the hosts in the set are vacant and one or more of the virtual machines of the set are uninstalled." There is nothing in the cited paragraph or FIG. SC that supports a conclusion that Abbondanzio teaches "the hosts in the set are vacant" and "the virtual machines of the set are uninstalled." In this regard, it is respectfully submitted that given that Abbondanzio discloses "upon relocating virtual machine(s) 309," the only fair read of Abbondanzio is that the virtual machine(s) are installed - opposite to claim language that the virtual machine(s) are "uninstalled" in the relevant claim language.”
The examiner fully considers and respectfully disagree, as in response to applicant's argument that the examiner's conclusion of obviousness is based upon improper hindsight reasoning, it must be recognized that any judgment on obviousness is in a sense necessarily a reconstruction based upon hindsight reasoning. But so long as it takes into account only knowledge which was within the level of ordinary skill at the time the claimed invention was made, and does not include knowledge gleaned only from the applicant's disclosure, such a reconstruction is proper. See In re McLaughlin, 443 F.2d 1392, 170 USPQ 209 (CCPA 1971). The examiner would like to point out that with the current claim language, under BRI, and as explained in the rejection of the limitation d(1) “uninstall of one or more virtual machines of the pod from one or more of the hosts of the set, so that one or more of the hosts in the set become vacant;” The citations at [0062] – [0064] disclose the processes of identifying the VMs that would be affected by the maintenance operation on the host, then the affected VMs would be relocated to different node, as the VMs are uninstalled from the node. Even the above paragraphs do not provide an example, but there would be a situation where all VMs are affected by the maintenance operation, then all of the affected VMs would be relocated to a different node, and as a result, there is no VMs running on the maintenance node, as the maintenance node becomes vacant. And at FIG. 5C and [0072] discloses the maintenance operation is performed on computing node 201A, in which all of the VMs on the computing node 201A are move to computing node 201N, as discloses in [0064]. Since there is no VM running on node 201A, it would imply that node 201A is vacant. As explained above, the examiner believe that the mapping is appropriate, and the Abbondanzio reference would clearly discloses the limitations of the independent claim 4 that the examiner replied on.
Thus, based on all of the above explanation, the examiner finds these arguments
unpersuasive and maintains that the rejection under 35 U.S.C. § 103 is proper.
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 4, 9, 14, and 19 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Abbondanzio et al. US Pub. No. US 20130191543 A1 (hereafter Abbondanzio), in further view of Weissman et al. US Pub. No. US 20190324865 A1 (hereafter Weissman) and Muthukrishnan et al. US Pub. No. US 20230350733 A1 (hereafter Muthukrishnan)
Regarding claim 4, Abbondanzio teaches the invention substantially as claimed A method of operating a cloud computing system incorporating a plurality of hosts and a supervisory computer (FIG. 3 and [0038]: “, FIG. 3 illustrates cloud computing nodes 201A-N in a virtualized computer environment in accordance with an embodiment of the present invention. Cloud computing nodes 201A-201N may collectively or individually be referred to as cloud computing nodes 201 or cloud computing node 201, respectively. Cloud computing nodes 201A-N are each coupled to an administrative server 301 configured to provide data center-level functions of communicating with hypervisors on cloud computing nodes 201 to install virtual machines, terminate/suspend virtual machines and relocate virtual machines from one cloud computing node 201 to another within the data center.”) The citation discloses the cloud computing nodes 201A-N/hosts, that couple to an administrative server 301/supervisory computer.
and, after steps (b) and (c): (d) initiate a maintenance interval and during the maintenance interval: (FIG. 5A, B, C, and [0061]: “Referring to FIG. 5A, in conjunction with FIGS. 1-4, in step 501, administrative server 301 receives an indication that maintenance (e.g., updating firmware) is to be performed on cloud computing node 201 (e.g., cloud computing node 201A).”) The citation discloses the administrative server 301 initiate the maintenance performance.
(1) uninstall of one or more virtual machines of the pod from one or more of the hosts of the set, so that one or more of the hosts in the set become vacant; ( [0062] – [0064]) The citations at [0062] – [0064] disclose the processes of identifying the VMs that would be affected by the maintenance operation on the host, then the affected VMs would be relocated to different node, as the VMs are uninstalled from the node. Even the above paragraphs do not provide an example, but there would be a situation where all VMs are affected by the maintenance operation, then all of the affected VMs would be relocated to a different node, and as a result, there is no VMs running on the maintenance node, as the maintenance node becomes vacant.
(2) while one or more of the hosts in the set are vacant and one or more of the virtual machines of the set are uninstalled, (i) perform a maintenance operation on the vacant hosts of the set, the uninstalled virtual machines, or both; (FIG. 5C and [0072]: “Referring to step 504, upon relocating virtual machine(s) 309 to suitable cloud computing node(s) 201, administrative server 301, in step 514 of FIG. 5C, performs the maintenance operation on cloud computing node 201 (e.g., cloud computing node 201A).”) The citation discloses the maintenance operation is performed on computing node 201A.
and (iii) reinstall the uninstalled virtual machines in the vacated hosts of the set ([0073]: “Referring to FIG. 5C, in conjunction with FIGS. 1-4, in step 515, administrative server 301 relocates virtual machine(s) 309 (those previously relocated to avoid affects of the maintenance operation) back to the newly updated cloud computing node(s) 201 and/or relocates virtual machine(s) 309 (those previously relocated to avoid affects of the maintenance operation) to other cloud computing node(s) 201 after the maintenance operation on cloud computing node 201 (e.g., cloud computing node 201A) is completed if there is a need to rebalance resources in such a manner.”)The citation discloses the affected VMs are relocated/reinstall, to the suitable cloud computing node/ hosts having a dedication attribute.
Abbondanzio fails to teach the method comprising causing the supervisory computer to: (a) maintain a record of virtual machines specified by customers, the virtual machines specified by the customers including a plurality of virtual machines constituting a pod, each virtual machine of the pod having a pod membership attribute denoting membership in the pod; (b) select a set of hosts including a plurality of the hosts and install each of the virtual machines in the first pod in a host in the set so that the pod is operational; (c) record a dedication attribute for each host in the set indicating that the host is dedicated to the pod; and (ii) prevent installation of any virtual machine which is not a member of the pod in any vacant host of the set by comparing a pod membership of each virtual machine proposed for installation to the dedication attribute of the host and blocking installation if the pod membership attribute of the virtual machine is null or differs from the dedication attribute of the host; by selecting hosts having a dedication attribute corresponding to the pod membership attribute of the virtual machine.
However, Muthukrishnan teaches the method comprising causing the supervisory computer to: (a) maintain a record of virtual machines specified by customers, the virtual machines specified by the customers including a plurality of virtual machines constituting a pod, [0044]: “To illustrate identifying an optimal placement for a VM cluster, computing system 100 receives a request to place a new VM cluster depicted by cluster 230 of FIG. 2B. The request indicates that the new VM cluster 230 should have two VMs that implement a database application, where the cluster requires 10 TB of space on a storage node in the fabric and thirty CPUs for each VM of the cluster. A VM cluster to be placed may have any cardinality.”) The citation discloses the computing system receives a request for a new VM clusters/VM pods, that have two VMs.
(b) select a set of hosts including a plurality of the hosts and install each of the virtual machines in the first pod in a host in the set so that the pod is operational; ([0059]: “Thus, computing system identifies compute nodes 114A, 114B, and 114G as the set of compute nodes from fabric 110 that satisfy the constraints for VM cluster 230.” and [0242]: “Returning to a discussion of flowchart 300 of FIG. 3, at step 310, the VM cluster is automatically provisioned on the particular combination of compute nodes. For example, computing system 100 automatically provisions VM cluster 230 on compute nodes 114A and 114G based on the hybrid comparison scheme, as illustrated above.” and [0243]: “For example, computing system 100 derives the workflow steps for placing VM cluster 230 on fabric 110 in the initial state S1 depicted in FIG. 2A, on compute node combination A-G (S2) as follows: [0244] Step 1) Allocate resources required for VM 230(A), including 30 CPUs, on node 114A. [0245] Step 2) Provision VM 230(A) on node 114A. [0246] Step 3) Allocate resources required for VM 230(B), including 30 CPUs, on node 114G. [0247] Step 4) Provision VM 230(B) on node 114G.”) The citation discloses the set of nodes 114A and 114G is selected for provisioning the VM cluster 230, where the VM 230(A) is provisioned to node 114A and VM 230(B) is provisioned to the node 114B.
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skills in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to add the method comprising causing the supervisory computer to: (a) maintain a record of virtual machines specified by customers, the virtual machines specified by the customers including a plurality of virtual machines constituting a pod; (b) select a set of hosts including a plurality of the hosts and install each of the virtual machines in the first pod in a host in the set so that the pod is operational, as taught in Muthukrishnan’s invention into Abbondanzio’s invention because by doing that, the system can ensure that pod resources are kept together and isolated from unrelated workloads, which helps to improve reliability, consistency, safe and efficient maintenance, and reduce the risk of configuration errors and service disruption.
However, Weissman teaches each virtual machine of the pod having a pod membership attribute denoting membership in the pod; ([0032]: “In an embodiment, each policy group may contain a specific membership selection pattern that is used to identify specific virtual machines, based upon a naming convention of the set of all virtual machines in primary cluster 102 that belong to a specific policy group...... For example, the membership selection pattern for policy group market research may implement pattern matching to match “mkt-res” in the name of available virtual machines. This pattern matching may be useful to match each virtual machine in the market research group that has the keyword “mkt-res” in its name.” and [0051]: “For example, if the virtual machines running on the primary cluster 102 are: [0052] virtual machine 112, name=“VM-112-mkt-res” [0053] virtual machine 114, name=“VM-114-mkt-res” [0054] virtual machine 116, name=“VM-116-rec-kp” [0055] virtual machine 118, name=“VM-118-mkt-res”, then for policy group market research, the policy group process identifies virtual machines 112, 114, and 118 as matching the first membership selection pattern. The policy group process then assigns virtual machines 112, 114, and 118 to the first policy group based upon the first membership selection pattern “mkt-res.”) The citation discloses the concept that each VMs has a specific membership (e.g. “mkt-res”) as membership attribute, that is used to identified the corresponding group (market research) that the VMs belong to.
(c) record a dedication attribute for each host in the set indicating that the host is dedicated to the pod; ([0028]: “In an embodiment, the policy group process is a computer program that may be implemented to run on any one of the compute nodes 122-126 or data nodes 132, 134.” and [0032]: “In an embodiment, each policy group may contain a specific membership selection pattern that is used to identify specific virtual machines, based upon a naming convention of the set of all virtual machines in primary cluster 102 that belong to a specific policy group...... For example, the membership selection pattern for policy group market research may implement pattern matching to match “mkt-res” in the name of available virtual machines. This pattern matching may be useful to match each virtual machine in the market research group that has the keyword “mkt-res” in its name.” and [0051]: “For example, if the virtual machines running on the primary cluster 102 are: [0052] virtual machine 112, name=“VM-112-mkt-res” [0053] virtual machine 114, name=“VM-114-mkt-res” [0054] virtual machine 116, name=“VM-116-rec-kp” [0055] virtual machine 118, name=“VM-118-mkt-res”, then for policy group market research, the policy group process identifies virtual machines 112, 114, and 118 as matching the first membership selection pattern. The policy group process then assigns virtual machines 112, 114, and 118 to the first policy group based upon the first membership selection pattern “mkt-res.”) The citation discloses at [0028] that each policy group is corresponding to a compute node. At [0032] and [0051] discloses the concept that each policy group/host, has a specific name (e.g. “market research”) as membership attribute, that each VMs of the pod has the membership (“mkt-res”) should belong to that group.
and (ii) prevent installation of any virtual machine which is not a member of the pod in any available host of the set by comparing a pod membership of each virtual machine proposed for installation to the dedication attribute of the host and blocking installation if the pod membership attribute of the virtual machine is null or differs from the dedication attribute of the host; (e.g.[0051]: “For example, if the virtual machines running on the primary cluster 102 are: [0052] virtual machine 112, name=“VM-112-mkt-res” [0053] virtual machine 114, name=“VM-114-mkt-res” [0054] virtual machine 116, name=“VM-116-rec-kp” [0055] virtual machine 118, name=“VM-118-mkt-res”, then for policy group market research, the policy group process identifies virtual machines 112, 114, and 118 as matching the first membership selection pattern. The policy group process then assigns virtual machines 112, 114, and 118 to the first policy group based upon the first membership selection pattern “mkt-res.” and e.g. [0056] At block 215, the policy group process assigns a second set of virtual machines to the second policy group based upon a second membership selection pattern associated with the second policy group. If the second policy group is the recordkeeping group and the second membership selection pattern is “rec-kp” for virtual machine names, then the policy group process identifies all virtual machines running within the primary cluster 102 that have a virtual machine name that matches the second membership selection pattern “rec-kp.” As in the previous example, the policy group process identifies virtual machine 116 as matching the second membership selection pattern. The policy group process then assigns virtual machine 116 to the second policy group based upon the second membership selection pattern “rec-kp.”) The citation discloses at [0051] – [0056] the concept of assigning/installing the VMs to the corresponding nodes comprises the policy group. For example, the name= “VM-116-rec-kp” is not being assigned/installed, or blocking the assigning/installing of the “VM-116-rec-kp” at the first group, as the first group only for the VMs that has the membership “mkt-res.”. Weissman does not clearly teach the “available host” as “vacant hosts”. This limitation was taught by Abbondanzio, as discuss above.
by selecting hosts having a dedication attribute corresponding to the pod membership attribute of the virtual machine. ([0032]: “This pattern matching may be useful to match each virtual machine in the market research group that has the keyword “mkt-res” in its name. By doing so, additional market research virtual machines may be created and dynamically added to the market research policy group by including “mkt-res” within the name of the virtual machine.”) The citation discloses only VMs have the keywords “mkt-res” as assigned/installed to the market research policy group.
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skills in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to add each virtual machine of the pod having a pod membership attribute denoting membership in the pod; (c) record a dedication attribute for each host in the set indicating that the host is dedicated to the pod; and (ii) prevent installation of any virtual machine which is not a member of the pod in any vacant host of the set by comparing a pod membership of each virtual machine proposed for installation to the dedication attribute of the host and blocking installation if the pod membership attribute of the virtual machine is null or differs from the dedication attribute of the host; by selecting hosts having a dedication attribute corresponding to the pod membership attribute of the virtual machine, as taught in Weissman’s invention into Abbondanzio’s invention because this would help the system can clearly track which VMs belong together and which hosts are reserved for them, and as only the correct VMs are reinstalled on the corresponding hosts and preventing interference from unrelated workloads, which allows the computing system to enforce strict placement rules during maintenance, and helps maintain pod isolation, system integrity, and service continuity.
Regarding claim 9, Abbondanzio, in view of Muthukrishnan and Weissman, discloses the method as claimed in claim 4, and Weissman further teaches wherein no virtual machines other than the virtual machines of the pod are installed in the hosts of the set. (e.g.[0051]: “For example, if the virtual machines running on the primary cluster 102 are: [0052] virtual machine 112, name=“VM-112-mkt-res” [0053] virtual machine 114, name=“VM-114-mkt-res” [0054] virtual machine 116, name=“VM-116-rec-kp” [0055] virtual machine 118, name=“VM-118-mkt-res”, then for policy group market research, the policy group process identifies virtual machines 112, 114, and 118 as matching the first membership selection pattern. The policy group process then assigns virtual machines 112, 114, and 118 to the first policy group based upon the first membership selection pattern “mkt-res.”) The citation discloses only VMs 112, 114, and 118 are assigned/installed to the node/host, that has the policy group market research, and the VM 116 is not assigned as it is belong to different group.
Regarding claim 14, it is a non-transitory computer-readable medium claim having similar limitations cited in claim 4. Thus, claim 14 is also rejected under the same rational as cited in the rejection of rejected claim 4.
Regarding claim 19, it is a non-transitory computer-readable medium claim having similar limitations cited in claim 9. Thus, claim 19 is also rejected under the same rational as cited in the rejection of rejected claim 9.
Claims 5 and 15 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Abbondanzio, Weissman, and Muthukrishnan, in further view of Ramachandran et al. US Pub. No. US 20220075613 A1 (hereafter Ramachandran)
Regarding claim 5, Abbondanzio, in view of Muthukrishnan and Weissman, discloses the method as claimed in claim 4, but fails to teach wherein to initiate a maintenance interval includes initiating a maintenance interval at a time specified by a customer having ownership of the virtual machines of the pod.
However, Ramachandran teaches wherein to initiate a maintenance interval includes initiating a maintenance interval at a time specified by a customer having ownership of the virtual machines of the pod. ([0025]: “Thus, the present disclosure provides technical solutions for accurately predicting update times, as well as enabling a user to accurately plan a maintenance window. Specifically, the present disclosure provides an LCM that is configured to estimate an upgrade time for each type of upgrade that may be applied to a cluster and plan a user's maintenance window, including recommending an upgrade plan to a user based on user defined preferences or parameters. In some embodiments, the LCM provides a planning assistance feature and an execution assistance feature. The planning assistance feature provides assistance to accurately estimate upgrade times, plan upgrades within a user's desired maintenance window, and recommend one or more upgrade plans to the user to suit user's preferences.”) The citation discloses the concept of based on user input of the desire maintenance window, the system calculate and let the user select the best suitable time for performing the maintenance.
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skills in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to add the wherein to initiate a maintenance interval includes initiating a maintenance interval at a time specified by a customer having ownership of the virtual machines of the pod, as taught in Ramachandran’s invention into Abbondanzio, Weissman, and Muthukrishnan’s invention because this would help to avoid disruption during critical periods and improve user satisfaction and system flexibility, since customer can choose when to perform the maintenance.
Regarding claim 15, it is a non-transitory computer-readable medium claim having similar limitations cited in claim 5. Thus, claim 15 is also rejected under the same rational as cited in the rejection of rejected claim 5.
Claims 6 and 16 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Abbondanzio, Weissman, Muthukrishnan, and Ramachandran, in further view of Guo et al. US Pat. No. US 11354150 B1 (hereafter Guo) and Gupta et al. US Pat. No. US 10853111 B1 (hereafter Gupta)
Regarding claim 6, Abbondanzio, in view of Muthukrishnan, Weissman, and Ramachandran, discloses The method as claimed in claim 5, but fails to teach wherein to initiate a maintenance interval includes operating the supervisory software to notify the customer of an impending maintenance interval before a time planned for commencement of such maintenance interval and, when the customer responds with a time earlier than the time planned, rescheduling the maintenance interval to commence at the time specified in the response.
However, Guo teaches wherein to initiate a maintenance interval includes operating the supervisory software to notify the customer of an impending maintenance interval before a time planned for commencement of such maintenance interval (Col 12, lines 6 – 19: “Upon determining a schedule for the maintenance events, the maintenance manager 202 may store the maintenance data 118 in the data store 116 and generate the notification(s) 136. For example, the maintenance manager 202 may send a first notification 136 to user interface 138 identifying the impacted instances 208 (e.g., the instances 204A, 204C, 204D, and 204I), the tags specified by the user 140, and the indication that maintenance event is to occur on Saturday at 8 AM. Similarly, the maintenance manager 202 may send a second notification 136 to user interface 138 identifying the impacted instances 208 (e.g., the instances 204J-204M, 204O, 204P, 204R-T, and 204V), the tags specified by the user 140, and the indication that maintenance event is to occur on Saturday at 9 AM.”) The citation discloses the maintenance manager sends the notification to the user’s UI about the up-coming maintenance events.
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skills in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to add the wherein to initiate a maintenance interval includes operating the supervisory software to notify the customer of an impending maintenance interval before a time planned for commencement of such maintenance interval and, when the customer responds with a time earlier than the time planned, rescheduling the maintenance interval to commence at the time specified in the response, as taught in Guo’s invention into Abbondanzio, Muthukrishnan, Weissman, and Ramachandran’s invention because this would offer greater flexibility and responsiveness to customer needs, reduce unplanned downtime during peak usage periods, and improve coordination and customer satisfaction by letting them to select their own maintenance schedule.
Guo teaches the user could modify the event window (the maintenance events) at FIG. 3B and col 13, lines 32 – 36, but fails to teach when the customer responds with a time earlier than the time planned, rescheduling the maintenance interval to commence at the time specified in the response.
However, Gupta teaches and when the customer responds with a time earlier than the time planned, rescheduling the maintenance interval to commence at the time specified in the response. (Col 19, lines 29 – 35: “That is, the feedback application programming interface request may specify that the system or migration manager should proceed with the maintenance operation before the maintenance operation was originally schedule if, for example, the user determines that the current time is a more ideal time for the maintenance operation.”) The citation discloses the user selects the current time/earlier time as the time to perform the maintenance operation.
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skills in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to add the wherein to initiate a maintenance interval includes operating the supervisory software to notify the customer of an impending maintenance interval before a time planned for commencement of such maintenance interval and, when the customer responds with a time earlier than the time planned, rescheduling the maintenance interval to commence at the time specified in the response, as taught in Gupta’s invention into Abbondanzio, Muthukrishnan, Weissman, and Ramachandran’s invention because this would offer greater flexibility and responsiveness to customer needs, reduce unplanned downtime during peak usage periods, and improve coordination and customer satisfaction by letting them to select their own maintenance schedule.
Regarding claim 16, it is a non-transitory computer-readable medium claim having similar limitations cited in claim 6. Thus, claim 16 is also rejected under the same rational as cited in the rejection of rejected claim 6.
Claims 7 and 17 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Abbondanzio, Weissman, and Muthukrishnan, in further view of Sangra et al. US Pat. No. US 10972353 B1 (hereafter Sangra).
Regarding claim 7, Abbondanzio, in view of Muthukrishnan and Weissman, discloses The method as claimed in claim 4, but fails to teach further comprising causing the supervisory computer to operate the supervisory software to sort the hosts into a plurality of maintenance buckets and initiate maintenance intervals for all of the hosts in a given bucket within a bucket interval associated with that bucket, the sorting step including assigning all of the hosts of the set to a single maintenance bucket.
However, Sangra teaches further comprising causing the supervisory computer to operate the supervisory software to sort the hosts into a plurality of maintenance buckets (Col 2, lines 40 – 49: “In some implementations, using dynamic clustering to create the clusters of hosts may include selecting an initial host and creating initial clusters of time slots for the initial host, adding other hosts to the initial clusters of time slots when a distance between time slots for the other hosts and the initial clusters of time slots are within a threshold distance, and creating and adding new time slots to the initial clusters of time slots when the distance between the time slots for the other hosts and the initial clusters of time slots exceed the threshold distance.”) The citation discloses the creating clusters/buckets, of hosts into time slots when a distance between time slots for the other hosts and the initial clusters of time slots are within a threshold distance.
and initiate maintenance intervals for all of the hosts in a given bucket within a bucket interval associated with that bucket, (Col. 7, lines 58 – 62: “The application 108 buckets or clusters the hosts together in one or more time slots in a service-aware manner based on the times of least resource usage and selects one or more change windows as the optimal times to perform maintenance or updates.”) The citation discloses the performance of maintenance or updates to the buckets or clusters of the hosts.
the sorting step including assigning all of the hosts of the set to a single maintenance bucket. (Col 12, lines 63 – 67 and Col 13, lines 1 – 6: “Process 200 includes using dynamic clustering to create clusters of hosts using the groups of time slots (208). For example, with respect to FIG. 1 and the application 108, the cluster module 124 is configured to use dynamic clustering to create clusters of hosts using the groups of time slots. Using dynamic clustering (208) may include selecting an initial host and creating initial clusters of time slots for the initial host, adding other hosts to the initial clusters of time slots when a distance (e.g., a Euclidean distance) between time slots for the other hosts and the initial clusters of time slots are within a threshold distance”) The citation discloses the creating of clusters of hosts and adding other hosts (time slots are within a threshold distance) to the clusters.
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skills in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to add the further comprising causing the supervisory computer to operate the supervisory software to sort the hosts into a plurality of maintenance buckets and initiate maintenance intervals for all of the hosts in a given bucket within a bucket interval associated with that bucket, the sorting step including assigning all of the hosts of the set to a single maintenance bucket, as taught in Sangra’s invention into Abbondanzio, Weissman, and Muthukrishnan’s invention because this would help the system to coordinate maintenance activities more efficiently and consistently, reduce the risk of partial pod disruption, simplify scheduling, and improve service reliability during the maintenance, since related hosts are maintained within the same time window.
Regarding claim 17, it is a non-transitory computer-readable medium claim having similar limitations cited in claim 7. Thus, claim 17 is also rejected under the same rational as cited in the rejection of rejected claim 7.
Claims 8 and 18 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Abbondanzio, Weissman, and Muthukrishnan, in further view of McKenzie et al. US Pub. No. US 20130155083 A1 (hereafter McKenzie)
Regarding claim 8, Abbondanzio, in view of Muthukrishnan and Weissman, discloses The method as claimed in claim 4, but fails to teach wherein the virtual machines of the pod are GPU machines and share data with one another via remote direct memory access
However, McKenzie teaches wherein the virtual machines of the pod are GPU machines and share data with one another via remote direct memory access ([0116]: “In some embodiments, graphics hardware may be directly assigned to a virtual machine using direct mapping techniques, such as Virtualization Technology for Directed I/O (VT-d) and AMD's I/O Virtualization Technology (AMD-Vi). Such techniques may use an input/output memory management unit (IOMMU) to enable a virtual machine to directly use graphics cards through direct memory access (DMA) and interrupt remapping. This is sometimes called PCI passthrough. In some embodiments, DMA remapping refers to address translations for device DMA data transfers. As an example of DMA remapping, IOMMUs can be implemented in PCI root bridges to provide DMA addressability. Other examples of DMA remapping techniques and facilities may include the AGP Graphics Aperture Remapping Table (GART), the Translation and Protection Table (TPT) defined in the Virtual Interface Architecture, the InfiniBand Architecture, and Remote DMA (RDMA) over TCP/IP specifications.”) The citation discloses the VMs can access the graphics hardware via RDMA.
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skills in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to add the wherein the virtual machines of the pod are GPU machines and share data with one another via remote direct memory access, as taught in McKenzie’s invention into Abbondanzio, Weissman, and Muthukrishnan’s invention because by using the RDMA as method for sharing data, it would improve the data transfer speeds and the overall system performance, faster communication and lower latency within the computing system.
Regarding claim 18, it is a non-transitory computer-readable medium claim having similar limitations cited in claim 8. Thus, claim 18 is also rejected under the same rational as cited in the rejection of rejected claim 8.
Claims 10 and 20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Abbondanzio, Weissman, and Muthukrishnan, in further view of WIGGERS et al. US Pub. No. US 20220035662 A1 (hereafter WIGGERS)
Regarding claim 10, Abbondanzio, in view of Muthukrishnan and Weissman, discloses The method as claimed in claim 4, and Abbondanzio further teaches and wherein steps (b)-(d) are performed separately for different ones of the pods, (FIG. 3, FIG. 5A - 5C, [0061]: “Referring to FIG. 5A, in conjunction with FIGS. 1-4, in step 501, administrative server 301 receives an indication that maintenance (e.g., updating firmware) is to be performed on cloud computing node 201 (e.g., cloud computing node 201A).”) The citation discloses at FIG. 3 that the system comprises multiples cloud computing node, and each node contains different VMs. At [0061] discloses an example of performing the maintenance on the node 201A for purposes of illustration. Therefore, the same maintenance could also perform on different node (e.g. node 201N).
Weissman further teaches wherein, in step (a) the virtual machines include virtual machines in a plurality of pods, and virtual machines in different ones of the pods have different membership attributes, ......., the hosts of each set having a dedication attribute corresponding to the membership attribute of one of the pods (e.g. [0030]: “The market research policy group may be defined as a set of virtual machines related to the market research department. For instance, the market research policy group may include virtual machines that are used by members of the market research team and other virtual machines that run market research related servers and applications.” and [0033] – [0035]) The citation discloses the examples of different group/pods, of VMs, have different memberships labels to indicate which VMs should belong to the corresponding group. At [0030] discloses within the market research policy group, there are smaller division of VMs that used by member of market research team, and other VMs run market research related servers and applications.
Abbondanzio, in view of Muthukrishnan and Weissman, fails to teaches so that as to form plural sets of hosts.
However, WIGGERS teaches so that as to form plural sets of hosts (FIG. 1) FIG. 1 discloses multiple sets of hosts 119 and multiple set of VMs (Pod VMs 130, 140, 143, and 145)
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skills in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to add the so that as to form plural sets of hosts, as taught in WIGGERS’s invention into Abbondanzio, Weissman, and Muthukrishnan’s invention because this would help the system to manage and maintain several pods in isolation, which simplifies maintenance scheduling and more efficient using of system resources, by allowing different pods to be maintained without affects the operation and security of others.
Regarding claim 20, it is a non-transitory computer-readable medium claim having similar limitations cited in claim 10. Thus, claim 20 is also rejected under the same rational as cited in the rejection of rejected claim 10.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure:
US 11494217 B1: discloses systems, devices, and techniques for selectively migrating virtualized resources from outdated hosts in a network to updated hosts in the network during requested reboot operations, wherein the updated, maintenance, or frequent security updates can only be performed on a host that is unoccupied with operating virtualized resources, or a host is emptied of virtualized resources prior to an update.
THIS ACTION IS MADE FINAL. Applicant is reminded of the extension of time policy as set forth in 37 CFR 1.136(a).
A shortened statutory period for reply to this final action is set to expire THREE MONTHS from the mailing date of this action. In the event a first reply is filed within TWO MONTHS of the mailing date of this final action and the advisory action is not mailed until after the end of the THREE-MONTH shortened statutory period, then the shortened statutory period will expire on the date the advisory action is mailed, and any nonprovisional extension fee (37 CFR 1.17(a)) pursuant to 37 CFR 1.136(a) will be calculated from the mailing date of the advisory action. In no event, however, will the statutory period for reply expire later than SIX MONTHS from the mailing date of this final action.
Examiner has cited particular columns/paragraphs/sections and line numbers in the references applied and not relied upon to the claims above for the convenience of the applicant. Although the specified citations are representative of the teachings of the art and are applied to specific limitations within the individual claim, other passages and figures may apply as well. It is respectfully requested from the applicant in preparing responses, to fully consider the references in 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.
When responding to the Office action, applicant is advised to clearly point out the patentable novelty the claims present in view of the state of the art disclosed by the reference(s) cited or the objections made. A showing of how the amendments avoid such references or objections must also be present. See 37 C.F.R. 1.111(c).
When responding to this Office action, applicant is advised to provide the line and page numbers in the application and/or reference(s) cited to assist in locating the appropriate paragraphs.
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/TUAN M NGUYEN/Examiner, Art Unit 2198
/PIERRE VITAL/Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2198