Non-Final Rejection
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 .
Claim 8 is objected to as having minor informalities
Claims 1-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103
Response to Amendment
Claim Objections
Claim 8 is objected to because of the following informalities: different spellings of the word “processor” are used within the claim. Applicant should use consistent spelling of the same term in order to avoid confusion. Appropriate correction is required.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
The text of those sections of Title 35, U.S. Code not included in this action can be found in a prior Office action.
Claims 1, 6-8, 12-14, and 19-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Balle et al. (U.S. Publication No. 2022/0019461 A1), hereinafter referred to as Balle, in view of Venkataraman et al. (U.S. Publication No. 2022/0398123 A1), hereinafter referred to as Venkataraman.
With regards to Claim 1, Balle teaches:
A component health determination and reporting system (Paragraph 0007), comprising:
a … (Fig. 1, autonomous self-healing system) …;
a processor (Paragraph 0011; Fig. 1) …;
and a storage device that is housed in the …, that is coupled to the processor, and that includes (Fig. 1; Paragraph 0007, platform):
at least one storage device component that is housed in the storage device (Fig. 1, Paragraph 0008, telemetry agent; Paragraph 0007, storage) …;
and a health report generation subsystem … that is coupled to each of the at least one storage device component and that is configured to (Fig. 1, Infrastructure Processing Unit 20):
receive telemetry data from each of the at least one storage device component (Fig. 1; Paragraph 0007);
perform data compaction operations on the telemetry data to generate compacted telemetry data (Fig. 1; Paragraph 0010);
perform inference operations on the compacted telemetry data to generate a health report for the storage device (Paragraphs 0009-0011; Paragraph 0007, storage);
and provide the health report to the processor in the … (Paragraph 0011).
Venkataraman teaches the following limitations not explicitly taught by Balle:
… server (Paragraphs 0110 and 0118) …
… that is housed in the server (Paragraph 0110, server with SSDs; Paragraphs 0036-0037, storage device that has SSDs; Paragraphs 0062 and 0040-0042 and Fig. 1 and 4);
… that is housed in the storage device (Fig. 4 and Paragraphs 0077-0078) …
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art in which said subject matter pertains to, prior to the effective filing date of the claimed invention, apply the logic of Balle to the server system with SSDs of Venkataraman, in order to integrate the environment and simplify and optimize monitoring and management (Venkataraman, Paragraphs 0028, 0101-0102, and 0110-0111; Balle, Paragraph 0005). Balle describes a process of monitoring computing components, which could be storage, but lacks elements of the specific claimed structure as cited above. Venkataraman describes monitoring individual storage devices within a server to reduce load upon a singular CPU. By combining the specific monitoring process of Balle with the structure and monitoring of Venkataraman, the server system becomes optimized and scalable (Venkataraman, Paragraphs 0028, 0101-0102, and 0110-0111; Balle, Paragraph 0005).
With regards to Claim 6, Balle in view of Venkataraman teaches the system of Claim 1 as referenced above. Balle in view of Venkataraman further teaches:
wherein the data compaction operations generate the compacted telemetry data such that the compacted telemetry data is free of anomalies that are present in the telemetry data stream (Balle, Paragraph 0010, remove uninterpretable and irrelevant data).
With regards to Claim 7, Balle in view of Venkataraman teaches the system of Claim 1 as referenced above. Balle in view of Venkataraman further teaches:
wherein the storage device is a Non-Volatile Memory express (NVMe) storage device (Balle, Fig. 1; Paragraph 0007, platform may be storage; Venkataraman, Paragraphs 0101-0102 and 0035).
With regards to Claim 8, Balle teaches the following:
…
a storage device processor (Paragraph 0021) …;
and a storage device memory that is included in …, that is coupled to the storage device processer, and that includes instructions that, when executed by the storage device processer, cause the storage device processer to provide (Paragraph 0021) a health report generation engine that is configured to (Fig. 1, Infrastructure Processing Unit 20):
…
Venkataraman teaches the following limitation not explicitly taught by Balle:
a server mounting subsystem that is configured to mount the storage device in a server (Fig. 1 and Paragraph 0110);
… [that is included in] the storage device (Paragraph 0095) …
… when the storage device is mounted in the server (Fig. 1 and Paragraph 0110).
Please see the above rejection of Claim 1 for citations of the remaining limitations, as well as the motivation to combine references in accordance with 35 U.S.C. 103.
All limitations found in Claims 12 and 13 have been addressed in the analyses of Claims 6 and 7 respectively. Please see the above rejections for further details.
With regards to Claim 14, Balle teaches:
A method for determining and reporting component health (Paragraph 0007), comprising: …
Balle in view of Venkataraman teaches the remaining limitations of Claim 14. Please see the above rejection of Claim 1 for citations of the remaining limitations, as well as the motivation to combine references in accordance with 35 U.S.C. 103.
All limitations found in Claims 19 and 20 have been addressed in the analyses of Claims 6 and 7 respectively. Please see the above rejections for further details.
Claims 2-5, 9-11, and 15-18 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Balle in view of Venkataraman, in further view of Joshi et al. (U.S. Publication No. 2023/0251953 A1), hereinafter referred to as Joshi.
With regards to Claim 2, Balle in view of Venkataraman teaches the system of Claim 1 as referenced above. Balle in view of Venkataraman further teaches:
a support system that is coupled to the computing (Balle, Fig. 1; Paragraph 0014; Paragraph 0019, data center server 10) …, wherein the health report generation subsystem is configured to:
receive, from the support system …, first inference operation parameters (Balle, Fig. 1; Paragraph 0014, the central ML model may update the weights of the ML model 132 and send data from other IPUs);
and utilize the first inference operation parameters in the inference operations (Balle, Paragraphs 0009-0011 and 0014, the data is used in the IPU’s operations).
Joshi teaches the following limitation not explicitly taught by Balle in view of Novak:
… via a/the network (Paragraphs 0020 and 0024, devices can communicate over network) …
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art in which said subject matter pertains to, prior to the effective filing date of the claimed invention, allow the devices in the system of Balle in view of Venkataraman to communicate over a network as taught by Joshi, to allow for more types of devices to be utilized in the system (Joshi, Paragraph 0020, exemplary devices that may be connected via network) and allow for various Web communications (Joshi, Paragraphs 0031-0032).
With regards to Claim 3, Balle in view of Venkataraman in further view of Joshi teaches the system of Claim 2 as referenced above. Balle in view of Venkataraman in further in view of Joshi further teaches:
wherein the health report generation subsystem is configured to: transmit the compacted telemetry data via the network to the support system (Joshi, Paragraphs 0024-0025);
receive, from the support system via the network (Joshi, Paragraphs 0020 and 0024-0025), second inference operation parameters that are different from the first inference operation parameters, that were generated by the support system based on the compacted telemetry data, and that are configured for use in a subsequent performance of the inference operations in place of the first inference operation parameters (Joshi, Fig. 1 and 2; Paragraphs 0033 and 0035, the external server pushes out a new data set and weights to be used in analyses; Balle Fig. 1 and Paragraphs 0009-0011, inference and telemetry data; Balle, Paragraph 0014, the central ML model may update the weights of the ML model 132 and send data from other IPUs).
With regards to Claim 4, Balle in view of Venkataraman in further in view of Joshi teaches the system of Claim 3 as referenced above. Balle in view of Venkataraman in further in view of Joshi further teaches:
wherein the support system is configured to:
train, using the compacted telemetry data, a deep learning health report generation model to generate the second inference operation parameters (Balle, Paragraphs 0013-0016; Joshi, Fig. 1, cyclical generation of data/parameters).
With regards to Claim 5, Balle in view of Venkataraman teaches the system of Claim 1 as referenced above. Balle in view of Venkataraman further teaches:
wherein the telemetry data is received …, and wherein the data compaction operations include generating the compacted telemetry data using a first subset of the telemetry data …, and then updating the compacted telemetry data using a second subset of the telemetry data (Balle, Paragraph 0010, telemetry data is received, a subset of data to be removed is determined, and a new subset of data is determined) ...
Balle in view of Venkataraman does not explicitly teach:
…telemetry data stream…
However, Joshi teaches:
wherein the telemetry data is received in a telemetry data stream, and wherein the data compaction operations include generating the compacted telemetry data using a first subset of the telemetry data in the telemetry data stream, and then updating the compacted telemetry data using a second subset of the telemetry data in the telemetry data stream (Paragraph 0012, telemetry data received as the application executes; Paragraph 0068, filtering process).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art in which said subject matter pertains to, prior to the effective filing date of the claimed invention, collect telemetry data in a stream as taught by Joshi, in the system of Balle in view of Venkataraman, in order to collect more data, leading to higher confidence rates and greater ability to select relevant data (Joshi, Paragraph 0017).
All limitations found in Claims 9-11 have been addressed in the analyses of Claims 2-3 and 5 respectively. The motivations to combine references in accordance with 35 U.S.C. 103 can also be found in these respective rejections. Please see the above rejections under 35 U.S.C. 103 for further details.
All limitations found in Claims 15-18 have been addressed in the analyses of Claims 2-5 respectively. The motivations to combine references in accordance with 35 U.S.C. 103 can also be found in these respective rejections. Please see the above rejections under 35 U.S.C. 103 for further details.
Response to Arguments
Applicant's arguments filed on January 15th, 2026, have been fully considered but they are not persuasive.
Regarding arguments directed towards newly added limitations relating to the server, storage device, and other structural elements, a new reference, Venkataraman, has been cited to cover these limitations. Please see the above rejections for further details.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure:
Bannur Subraya et al. (U.S. Publication No. 2021/0073086 A1): teaches monitoring NVMe subsystems
Hands, “Monitoring the Health of NVMe SSDs”: teaches monitoring the health of NVMe SSDs using telemetry data
Paramesh et al. (U.S. Publication No. 2024/0111446 A1): teaches monitoring and requesting data related to NVMe asynchronous events
Wikipedia, “Self-Monitoring, Analysis, and Reporting Technology”: teaches monitoring of storage drives using SMART
Yu et al. (U.S. Publication No. 2017/0329736 A1): teaches managing NVMe drives in servers
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/G.K.S./Examiner, Art Unit 2113 /BRYCE P BONZO/Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2113