17956DETAILED ACTION
1. The present application, filed on or after March 16, 2013, is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA .
This action is responsive to the application filed 09/30/2022.
Claims 1-20 are presented for examination.
Information Disclosure Statement
2. The Applicants’ Information Disclosure Statement (filed 09/30/2022) has been received, entered into the record, and considered. A copy of PTO 1449 form is attached.
Drawings
3. The drawings filed 09/30/2022 are acceptable for examination purposes.
Specification
4. The specification has not been checked to the extent necessary to determine the presence of all possible minor errors. Applicant's cooperation is requested in correcting any errors of which applicant may become aware in the specification.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 102
5. In the event the determination of the status of the application as subject to AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103 (or as subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103) is incorrect, any correction of the statutory basis for the rejection will not be considered a new ground of rejection if the prior art relied upon, and the rationale supporting the rejection, would be the same under either status.
The following is a quotation of the appropriate paragraphs of 35 U.S.C. 102 that form the basis for the rejections under this section made in this Office action:
A person shall be entitled to a patent unless –
(a)(1) the claimed invention was patented, described in a printed publication, or in public use, on sale or otherwise available to the public before the effective filing date of the claimed invention.
Claims 1-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) as being anticipated by Thorpe et al. (US 20160321115).
It is noted that any citations to specific, pages, columns, paragraphs, lines, or figures in the prior art references and any interpretation of the reference should not be considered to be limiting in any way. A reference is relevant for all it contains and may be relied upon for all that it would have reasonably suggested to one having ordinary skill in the art. See MPEP 2123.
As to claim 1:
Thorpe teaches a method (Abstract: methods are provided for managing and/or executing cloud compute instances) of performing a workload with dynamic resource adjustment comprising:
requesting, via at least one processor, resources for a set of tasks from different resource providers, wherein the set of tasks includes first tasks and second tasks of longer duration than the first tasks, and wherein the resources are revocable by the different resource providers based on processing demand ([0008]: displaying, by a cloud provider, execution characteristics associated with a first class of resources, wherein the first class of resources are configured for on-demand request and are reserved for execution until completion of an associated compute task, displaying, by the cloud provider, execution characteristics associated with a second class of resources, wherein the second class of resources are configured such that that the second class of resources can be terminated by the cloud provider at any time; [0012]: obtain, store, and analyze historical time series of cloud compute resource (“resource”) characteristics, including at least costs and availability, for one or more resource types from one or more cloud compute providers (“providers”) by at least one application program interface (API); predict one or more resource characteristics over a future time duration for executing a submitted compute task (“task”) on one or more providers; [0013]: at least one API configured to: monitor resource characteristics for the one or more resource types from the one or more providers; update predictions for one or more resource characteristics for remaining portions of the future time duration; communicate the historical time series of resource characteristics and analysis of these time series, the analysis including predictions for one or more resource characteristics; wherein the at least one processor is further configure to: determine a duration of a reservation period for spot instances longer that an individual spot instance time unit sufficient to complete the task, based, at least in part, on the prediction of resource characteristics over the future time duration; offer execution of the task over the duration of the reservation according to a premium associated with the duration longer than the individual spot instance time unit; and accept, execute, and complete the task on the one or more providers before the reserved period expires regardless of actual availability of associated spot instances or spot kills);
initiating, via the at least one processor, performance of the first tasks on the resources ([0008]: accepting, by the cloud provider, selection of the second class of resources; triggering execution of the compute task utilizing the second class of resources; [0015]: accept selection of the second class of resources; trigger execution of the compute task utilizing the second class of resources);
initiating performance of the second tasks on the identified stable resources ([0015]: display execution characteristics associated with a first class of resources, wherein the first class of resources are configured for on-demand request and are reserved for execution until completion of an associated compute task; [0030]: These systems and/or methods can be further configured to gracefully handle spot kills issued by Providers (e.g., trigger preservation operations), trigger transitions to spot instances at another provider, trigger increased bidding to preserve current spot instances, and/or trigger a premium payment to allow for execution of preservation operations, among other options); and
adjusting, via the at least one processor, requests for the resources to the different resource providers based on resource provider information collected in response to completion of the set of tasks ([0031]: the systems and/or methods can put control of spot kill requests into the hands of the customer. For example, a customer API can be configured to request and bid for current spot instances and increase bidding to keep execution underway for a customer's compute task; see also, [0090]).
As to claim 2:
Thorpe teaches the different resource providers include cloud computing resource providers ([0012], [0014], and [0051]).
As to claim 3:
Thorpe teaches the resources include resource instances comprising a virtual machine ([0103]).
As to claim 4:
Thorpe teaches the resources include spot instances (Abstract, and [0030-0031]).
As to claim 5:
Thorpe teaches requesting resources for a set of tasks further comprises: partitioning, via the at least one processor, a resource request for the set of tasks into a plurality of requests each requesting a portion of the resources; and sending, via the at least one processor, the plurality of requests to the different resource providers to request the resources for the set of tasks ([0039-0040]).
As to claim 6:
Thorpe teaches adjusting requests for the resources further comprises: increasing a quantity of the resources requested from a resource provider having a lower cost based on the collected information ([0031], [0037], and [0090]).
As to claim 7:
Thorpe teaches partitioning, via the at least one processor, a plurality of jobs into job groups, wherein the set of tasks includes tasks of a corresponding job group ([0008] and [0015], and [0035]).
As to claims 8-13:
Refer to the discussion of claims 1-3 and 5-7 above, respectively, for rejections. Claims 8-13 are the same as claims 1-3 and 5-7, except claims 8-13 are system claims and claims 1-3 and 5-7 are method claims.
As to claims 14-20:
Refer to the discussion of claims 1-7 above, respectively, for rejections. Claims 14-20 are the same as claims 1-7, except claims 14-20 are computer program product claims and claims 1-7 are method claims.
Conclusion
6. The prior art made of record, listed on PTO 892 provided to Applicant is considered to have relevancy to the claimed invention. Applicant should review each identified reference carefully before responding to this office action to properly advance the case in light of the prior art.
Contact Information
7. Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to VAN H. NGUYEN whose telephone number is (571) 272-3765. The examiner can normally be reached on Monday- Friday from 9:00AM to 5:30 PM.
If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, LEWIS BULLOCK, can be reached at telephone number (571) 272-3759. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/VAN H NGUYEN/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2199