DETAILED ACTION
Claims 1, 4-11 and 14-20 are pending. Applicant has amended claims 1, 4, 11, 14 and 20.
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 Rejections - 35 USC § 103
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 (i.e., changing from AIA to pre-AIA ) 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 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, 4-11 and 14-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Cai (CN 109343965 A) in view of Parashar et al. (US 2013/0073724 A1) further in view of Ferris (US 9,930,138 B2) and LIU (CN 112015557 A – an English translation is provided by USPTO).
As to claim 1, Cai teaches a computer-implemented method, comprising:
receiving, at a quota management application (a resource adjusting device located in the cloud platform of the monitoring node; page 19, 6th paragraph), resource usage information for at least a first cluster (index obtaining module 60, for obtaining the operation index of each resource node in the monitoring cluster; page 19, 7th paragraph – page 20, 1st paragraph and pages 11-12, step S302 and page 17, steps S502 -S504) of a plurality of clusters of a multi-cluster cloud system (the cloud platform is provided with a monitoring node, each monitoring node can be connected to a plurality of monitoring clusters; page 7, 8th paragraph), wherein the quota management application includes a front-end component (index obtaining module 60; page 19, last paragraph), a backend component (a judging module 61; page 20, 2nd paragraph), a database (inherent from running index of plurality of nodes in a cluster are obtained and analyzed, thus, a repository/memory/database must be provided), a communication service (inherent from receiving running index from nodes, and sending adjustment result; pages 20-21), and the workflow processor (an adjustment module 62; page 20, 3rd, 7th and 8th paragraphs);
in response to received resource usage information, storing, by the quota management application, the resource usage information to provide local use of the resource usage information (inherent from “the judging module 61 used to: according to the running index of each resource, and each operation index value, calculate the resource utilization rate of the corresponding monitoring cluster”; page 20, 6th paragraph. Thus, the running index of each resource of each node of the cluster must be saved/stored for further calculation);
analyzing, at the quota management application, the resource usage information to determine the resource usage information of a first resource at the first cluster exceeds a first quota threshold for the first resource (according to the resource utilization rate, judging whether the monitoring cluster satisfies the pre-set resource adjusting threshold condition; page 20, 3rd and 6th paragraphs, and pages 12-14, steps S304-S308, and page 17, step S510);
in response to the first quota threshold being exceeded, sending, by the quota management application, a request to a workflow processor to request an increase in a quota for the first resource (Step S512, generating resource expansion information, sends the resource information to the resource management node … the resource capacity information may include resource node number needing capacity expansion and new operating parameters of the resource node; page 18, 1st and 2nd paragraphs); and
receiving a response to the request indicative of a grant of the increase (receiving the adjusted result returned by the resource management node; the adjusting result comprises a resource management node cluster to monitoring the newly added resource node; page 19, 1st paragraph),
wherein the front-end component provides an interface to view, control, monitor, and/or access resource usage at the plurality of cloud platforms of the multi-cloud system (index obtaining module 60 … monitor flow in one kind of or more; page 19, last paragraph and page 20, 4th paragraph).
Cai does not teach a first cloud platform of a plurality of cloud platforms of a multi-cloud system; and in response to receiving a response to the request indicative of a grant of the increase, sending, by the quota management application, a resource request towards the first cloud platform, wherein the resource request indicates the increase in the quota for the first resource, and wherein the front-end component provides via a graphical user interface (GUD) a centralized dashboard to view, control, monitor, and/or access resource usage at the plurality of cloud platforms of the multi-cloud system, the front-end component being configured to generate
one or more reports regarding the resource usage at the plurality of cloud platforms and further configured to make changes to the resource usage at the plurality of cloud platforms, wherein the front-end component is further configured to modify a quota threshold rule associated with the resource usage at the plurality of cloud platforms in response to a user request received via the GUI.
The difference between the system of Cai and the instant claim 1 is that the system of Cai teaches monitoring and adjusting resource of a cluster of a plurality of clusters in a cloud platform, and claim 1 is directed to monitoring and adjusting resource of a platform in a multi-platform system.
However, Parashar teaches a federated cloud that includes a plurality of clouds, where each cloud includes one or more nodes (abstract). The federated cloud may fulfill dynamically changing resource requirements elastically to meet the workloads need (paragraph [0037]). The federated cloud may be managed locally by each cloud agent. Each cloud agent may have only its own cloud resource status (paragraph [0041]). The cloud agent may manage and monitor local cloud nodes and resource status (paragraph [0042]). An adaptive manager may monitor the progress of running stages to determine whether user objects are satisfied. The adaptive manager may modify and/or adapt the provisioning of resources if a potential violation of one or more user objectives is detected (paragraph [0065]), wherein the user objective comprises a budget constraint, a privacy constraint, a time constraint, and a privacy constraint (claim 6).
Parashar further teaches wherein the front-end component provides via a graphical user interface (GUD) a centralized dashboard to view, control, monitor, and/or access resource usage at the plurality of cloud platforms of the multi-cloud system, the front-end component being configured to generate one or more reports regarding the resource usage at the plurality of cloud platforms (The autonomic scheduler 106 may be responsible for managing global resource availability of one or more clouds by building a global resource view from distributed clouds. In an embodiment, each cloud agent may have only its own cloud resource status. A cloud agent may send its cloud resource status to an autonomic scheduler so that the scheduler can have knowledge of the global resource status (for example, availability and capability). In an embodiment, an autonomic scheduler 106 may communicate with cloud agents 108, 110. Each cloud agent may have its local cloud resource status and the autonomic scheduler may gather this local resource status from cloud agents to build a global resource view. In an embodiment, the autonomic scheduler 106 may monitor the resource status of cloud nodes using the resource manager 134. In an embodiment, a resource status may refer to CPU availability, memory, network bandwidth and/or the like associated with a cloud node. The autonomic scheduler 106 may schedule workflow stages by selecting one or more clouds 126, 128 and deciding the number of nodes per cloud that should be used based on user objectives, resource status and/or changing workloads. In an embodiment, the resource manager 134 may periodically gather real-time resource statuses for one or more cloud nodes. The resource manager 134 may provide to the autonomic scheduler 106 a resource status of a specific node, a group of nodes, nodes of a cloud, all nodes in the federated cloud and/or the like; paragraph [0041]).
Given the teaching of Cai and Parashar above, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to apply the teaching of Parashar to the system of Cai, so the teaching of Cai can also be used in multi-cloud system, and the additional resources allocated must be within user objective.
Ferris teaches the front-end component provides via a graphical user interface (GUD) a centralized dashboard to view, control, monitor, and/or access resource usage at the plurality of cloud platforms of the multi-cloud system (a browser interface or other front-end can be used to view and operate the set of instantiated virtual machines 116 from a client or terminal, the processing, memory, communications, storage, and other hardware as well as software resources required to be combined to build the virtual machines or other resources are all hosted remotely in the cloud 102; col. 5, line 48-54 and the cloud management system 104 can further store, track and manage a user's identity and associated set of rights or entitlements to software, hardware, and other resources; col. 5, lines 14-17), the front-end component being configured to generate one or more reports regarding the resource usage at the plurality of cloud platforms (The cloud management system 104 can further generate records of the usage of instantiated virtual machines to permit tracking, billing, and auditing of the services consumed by the user. In embodiments, the cloud management system 104 can for example meter the usage and/or duration of the set of instantiated virtual machines 116, to generate subscription billing records for a user that has launched those machines; col. 5, lines 27-34 and the cloud management system 104 can be configured to control the overall management of the set of resources 108. For example, the cloud management system 104 can be configured to perform inventory management of the set of resources 108, perform network management of the set of resources 108, perform access control to the set of resources 108, perform instantiation of processes in the set of resources 108 and the like. To assist in the management, the cloud management system 104 can be configured to maintain a set of records 220 in a repository 225. The repository 225 can be any type of repository, such as a database. The set of records 220 can include the necessary information to perform the management functions on the set of resources 108. For example, the set of records 220 can include records containing the identification and configuration of the set of resources 108, records containing network identification and configuration of the set of resources 108, recording containing access control identification and specifications for the set of resources 108, records identifying and describing processes instantiated on the set of resources 108, and the like; col. 7, lines 16-36) and further configured to make changes to the resource usage at the plurality of cloud platforms (once the particular management record is identified, the cloud management system 104 can be configured to allocate resources from the user controlled resources 205 and 210 to the set of resources 108 utilizing the commands in the identified management record; col. 9, lines 1-5).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to apply the teaching of Ferris to the system of Cai as modified by Parashar because Ferris teaches method that allows users to view, manage and make change to resource usage via GUI.
LIU teaches a method to modify a quota threshold rule associated with the resource usage at the plurality of cloud platforms based on current resource usage (The invention claims a resource adjusting method, a device and a server, after obtaining the resource use amount of the target service in the cloud resource platform, if based on the resource use amount, and the current resource quota of the target service, determining the current resource quota needs to be adjusted the target service, then generating the recommended resource quota of the target service, so as to adjust the current resource quota of the target service according to the recommended resource quota, improving the flexibility of the operation, and not needing manual analysis, so as to improve the accuracy of the recommended resource quota, ensuring the reliable operation of the target service; abstract). LIU further teaches the generated recommended resource quota is sent to the user via a GUI, and the user sends an authorization instruction in response to receiving the recommended resource quota, and the quota threshold rule is modified in response to receive the authorization instruction from the user (“the authorization instruction is obtained by the following method: according to the preset notification channel, sending the recommended resource quota to the user, so that the user determines whether to issue the authorization instruction based on the recommended resource quota. the notification channel may include short message, mail or telephone, the notification channel also can be understood as the recommended resource quota recommended to the user, the adopted recommendation mode, specifically can be set according to the actual requirement; the user can also be called maintenance manager; the authorization instruction can be understood as the user allows the current resource quota is adjusted to recommend resource quota of the instruction”; page 14, last paragraph and “the user usually sends the authorization instruction, generally, the user can automatically check the resource use amount in the near period of time, to comprehensively analyze and judge whether the recommended resource quota is relatively objective and accurate. Step S518, if receiving the authorization instruction, adjusting the current resource quota of the target service according to the recommended resource quota.”; page 15, 3rd – 4th paragraphs).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to apply the teaching of LIU to the system of Cai as modified by Parashar and Ferris because LIU teaches a method to adjust the current resource quota of the target service according to the recommended resource quota, improving the flexibility of the operation, and not needing manual analysis, so as to improve the accuracy of the recommended resource quota, ensuring the reliable operation of the target service (abstract). Although the modify step is not in response to a user request, it occurs in response to the user authorization. Thus, the system could be modified to have the user request after receiving the recommended resource quota message.
As to claim 4, Cai as modified by Parashar and Ferris teaches wherein the resource usage information includes a current amount of database instances, a current amount of processor being used, a current amount of memory being used, a current amount of storage being used, and a current amount network bandwidth being used (see Parashar: paragraph [0041], Fig. 4 and associated text).
As to claim 5, Cai as modified by Parashar and LIU teaches wherein the backend component includes one or more rules to monitor and analyze the resource usage information at the plurality of cloud platforms of the multi-cloud system (page 20, 2nd, 5th and 6th paragraph).
As to claim 6, Cai as modified by Parashar and LIU teaches wherein the communication service provides an interface with at least an infrastructure service to centralize access to the plurality of cloud platforms of the multi-cloud system (the monitoring node connected with at least one monitoring cluster; page 8, 4th paragraph) and (see Cai: see Fig. 4 and associated text. Also, paragraph [0041] discloses the automatic scheduler can obtain cloud resource status from multiple clouds to generate a global view of resources).
As to claim 7, Cai as modified by Parashar and LIU teaches wherein the communication service provides a publish and subscribe system between the quota management application and the plurality of cloud platforms (see publish/subscribe element in Fig. 4).
As to claim 8, Cai as modified by Parashar and LIU teaches wherein the resource usage information for at least the first cloud platform is received as a publish and subscribe message from the infrastructure service, wherein the publish and subscribe message is published by the infrastructure service in response to change to the resource usage information at the first cloud platform (see Parashar: paragraphs [0042]-[0044]).
As to claim 9, Cai as modified by Parashar and LIU teaches wherein the database provides a local store for the resource usage information, the first quota threshold, and one or more rules to monitor and analyze the resource usage information at the plurality of cloud platforms of the multi-cloud system (inherent from running index of plurality of nodes in a cluster are obtained and analyzed, thus, a repository/memory/database must be provided; pages 20 and pages 12-13, which provides quota and rules).
As to claim 10, Cai as modified by Parashar and LIU teaches in response to receiving the response to the request indicative of the grant of the increase, sending, by the quota management application, a message to application using the first resource, the message indicating to the application of the increase in the quota for the first resource to enable the application to use the increase (receiving the adjusted result returned by the resource management node; the adjusting result comprises a resource management node cluster to monitoring the newly added resource node; page 19, 1st paragraph).
As to claim 11, see rejection of claim 1 above.
Cai further teaches a system comprising (a server; page 21, last paragraph):
at least one processor (a processor 101; page 21, last paragraph); and
at least one memory (memory 100) including code which when executed by the at least one processor (software modules, machine executable instructions; page 22, last paragraph).
As to claim 14, Cai as modified by Parashar teaches wherein the resource usage information includes a current amount of database instances, a current amount of processor being used, a current amount of memory being used, a current amount of storage being used, and a current amount network bandwidth being used (see Parashar: paragraph [0041], Fig. 4 and associated text).
As to claim 15, Cai as modified by Parashar teaches wherein the backend component includes one or more rules to monitor and analyze the resource usage information at the plurality of cloud platforms of the multi-cloud system (page 20, 2nd, 5th and 6th paragraph).
As to claim 16, Cai as modified by Parashar teaches wherein the communication service provides an interface with at least an infrastructure service to centralize access to the plurality of cloud platforms of the multi-cloud system (the monitoring node connected with at least one monitoring cluster; page 8, 4th paragraph) and (see Cai: see Fig. 4 and associated text. Also, paragraph [0041] discloses the automatic scheduler can obtain cloud resource status from multiple clouds to generate a global view of resources).
As to claim 17, Cai as modified by Parashar teaches wherein the communication service provides a publish and subscribe system between the quota management application and the plurality of cloud platforms (see publish/subscribe element in Fig. 4).
As to claim 18, Cai as modified by Parashar teaches wherein the resource usage information for at least the first cloud platform is received as a publish and subscribe message from the infrastructure service, wherein the publish and subscribe message is published by the infrastructure service in response to change to the resource usage information at the first cloud platform (see Parashar: paragraphs [0042]-[0044]).
As to claim 19, Cai as modified by Parashar teaches in response to receiving the response to the request indicative of the grant of the increase, sending, by the quota management application, a message to application using the first resource, the message indicating to the application of the increase in the quota for the first resource to enable the application to use the increase (receiving the adjusted result returned by the resource management node; the adjusting result comprises a resource management node cluster to monitoring the newly added resource node; page 19, 1st paragraph).
As to claim 20, see rejection of claim 1 above.
Parashar further teaches a non-transitory computer-readable storage medium including code (the program instructions may be stored on a tangible computer readable medium such as a compact disk, a digital disk, flash memory, a memory card, a USB drive, an optical disc storage medium; paragraph [0072]).
Response to Arguments
Applicant's arguments filed 5/5/2026 have been fully considered but they are not persuasive.
In response to Applicant’s arguments regarding LIU does not teach the limitation “wherein the front-end component is further configured to modify a quota threshold rule associated with the resource usage at the plurality of cloud platforms in response to a user request received via the GUI” because LIU is teaching away by perform the modify automatically, not manually.
Examiner respectfully disagrees because LIU teaches only the analysis step is performed automatically (abstract), and not a whole process. The process still requires user decides whether to modify a quota threshold rule or not, and perform only when the user grants the authorization.
The rejection has been modified to show the above teaching.
Therefore, the arguments are not persuasive and the rejection is maintained.
Conclusion
Applicant's amendment necessitated the new ground(s) of rejection presented in this Office action. Accordingly, THIS ACTION IS MADE FINAL. See MPEP § 706.07(a). 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.
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/DIEM K CAO/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2196
DC
July 14, 2026
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