DETAILED ACTION
Notice of Pre-AIA or AIA Status
The present application, filed on or after March 16, 2013, is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA .
Claim Status
Claims 1-20 are pending.
Claims 1-5, 7-9, 11-20 are rejected.
Claims 6 and 10 are objected.
Response to Arguments
Applicant’s arguments with respect to claims 1-20 have been fully considered and are
persuasive. Upon further consideration, and in view of applicant’s amendments, a new grounds of
rejection is made in view of newly cited references Lin and Voigt.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 6 and 10 are objected to as being dependent upon a rejected base claim, but would be allowable if rewritten in independent form including all of the limitations of the base claim and any intervening claims.
The following is a statement of reasons for the indication of allowable subject matter:
Regarding claim 6: The prior arts of the record lack disclosure or inference of the limitation “wherein a respective of the first and second databases is an in-memory key-value-store (memkvs)”. The closest prior art of the record, Lee, teaches “a memory for storing various elements” but does not teach “an in-memory key-value-store”.
Regarding claim 10: The prior arts of the record lack disclosure or inference of the steps “wherein the direct memory-transfer operation further comprises transferring a cyclic redundancy check (CRC) value from a first data structure associated with the first database of the active unit to a second data structure associated with the second database of the standby unit, and wherein the CRC value is computed based on the content of the first memory block”. The closest prior art of the record, Voigt, teaches a direct memory-transfer operation but doesn’t teach a direct memory-transfer operation further comprises transferring a cyclic redundancy check (CRC) value.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 103 which forms the basis for all obviousness rejections set forth in this Office action
A patent for a claimed invention may not be obtained, notwithstanding that the claimed invention is not identically disclosed as set forth in section 102, if the differences between the claimed invention and the prior art are such that the claimed invention as a whole would have been obvious before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to a person having ordinary skill in the art to which the claimed invention pertains. Patentability shall not be negated by the manner in which the invention was made.
Claims 1-5, 7-9, 11-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Lee (US 6721735 B1) hereafter Lee in view of Lin et al (US 20220179812 A1) hereafter Lin further in view of Voigt (US 20170052723 A1) hereafter Voigt
Regarding claim 1, Lee teaches a method comprising: receiving, by an appliance from a database management application on an active unit of the appliance, a notification indicating that a first memory block has been updated due to an update to a first entry in a first database of the active unit, wherein the first memory block stores the first entry in a first memory segment of a first memory device of the active unit (Para 9, detecting a change to at least one database record in any of a first plurality of databases based on a first set of parameters, and notifying a controller of the change, “database record” is analogous to “first memory block”); identifying, by the appliance, a second memory block that stores a corresponding second entry in a second database of a standby unit of the appliance, wherein the second memory block is in a second memory segment of a second memory device of the standby unit (Para 30, the DSS 112 communicates with the first plurality of databases 124 and the second plurality of databases 125 via a communications link 130); and replacing, by the appliance, content of the second memory block with content of the first memory block using a memory-transfer operation to synchronize the first and second entries (Para 9, updating, according to the detected change, each of a second plurality of databases containing the respective database record in response to a determination that the change falls within a second parameter).
Lee does not appear to explicitly teach wherein the first memory segment is outside of an accessible memory range of a first operating system of the active unit; and wherein the second memory segment is outside of an accessible memory range of a second operating system of the standby unit.
In analogous art, Lin teaches wherein the first memory segment is outside of an accessible memory range of a first operating system of the active unit; and wherein the second memory segment is outside of an accessible memory range of a second operating system of the standby unit (Para 0028, These communication primitives may include operating system bypass send and receive operations as well as remote direct memory access operations. RDMA is a set of technologies that enable the movement of data from the memory of one device directly, or at least substantially directly, into the memory of another device without involving the operating system of either device). It would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Lee to include the teaching of Lin. One of ordinary skill in the art would be motivated to implement this modification in order improve system performance, as taught by Lin (Para 0050, Because the operating system is bypassed, the RDMA quickly moves data from a system to the memory of the remote host through a network. Therefore, a large quantity of CPU resources may be saved, a system throughput is improved, overheads of external memory replication and context switching are eliminated, and memory bandwidth can be released to improve application system performance).
Lee in view of Lin does not appear to explicitly teach using a direct memory-transfer operation managed by a direct memory access (DMA) controller of the appliance independent of the first operating system and the second operating system to synchronize the first and second entries.
In analogous art, Voight teaches using a direct memory-transfer operation managed by a direct memory access (DMA) controller of the appliance independent of the first operating system and the second operating system to synchronize the first and second entries (Para 0012, Data may be transferred from the application server to the remote server using a remote direct memory access (RDMA)). It would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Lee in view of Lin to include the teaching of Voight. One of ordinary skill in the art would be motivated to implement this modification in order to reduce CPU overhead, as taught by Voight (Para 0012, RDMAs may reduce CPU overhead in a data transfer).
Regarding claim 2, Lee in view of Lin further in view of Voight teaches the method of claim 1, further comprising presenting, to the DMA controller of the appliance, the first and second memory segments as a unified flat memory space (Lee, Para 30, The processor 112-C4 cooperates with conventional support circuitry 112-C6 such as power supplies, clock circuits, cache memory and the like as well as circuits that assist in executing the software routines stored in the memory 112-C8).
Regarding claim 3, Lee in view of Lin further in view of Voight teaches the method of claim 2, wherein the active and standby units are housed in a chassis of the appliance, and wherein the DMA controller comprises a processor of the chassis outside of the active and standby units (Lee, Para 4, the communications system 100 of FIG. 1 comprises a software manager 102, a fault manager 104, an inventory manager 106, a provisioning manager 108, a tree manager 110, a Database Synchronization Server (DSS) 112, a DSS controller 112-C, a Digital Cross Connect Network Manager (DCS-NM) 114, a DCS element management system 116, a Synchronous Optical Network Manager (SONET-NM) 118, a SONET element management system 120, a domain manager 122, a first plurality of independent databases 124-1 through 124-N).
Regarding claim 4, Lee in view of Lin further in view of Voight teaches the method of claim 1, wherein the notification is triggered in response to completion of a transaction that updates the first entry, and wherein the database management application determines that the first memory block is updated by the transaction (Lee, Para 33, The last update.sub.1, field 320 is transparent and indicates the date and time records RA31 through RA33 were updated for DCS identifier field 310).
Regarding claim 5, Lee in view of Lin further in view of Voight teaches the method of claim 1, wherein the first and second entries store same state information for the active and secondary units, respectively, and wherein the state information facilitates a failover from the active unit to the standby unit (Lee, Para 29, the scheduled bulk updates are still completed to protect against occurrences such as failure to notify DSS 112 of a change in a database, communication failure and DSS 112 failure).
Regarding claim 7, Lee in view of Lin further in view of Voight teaches the method of claim 1, wherein the direct memory-transfer operation further comprises data replication from the first memory block to the second memory block using DMA (Voight, Para 0012, Data may be transferred from the application server to the remote server using a remote direct memory access). It would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Lee in view of Lin to include the teaching of Voight. One of ordinary skill in the art would be motivated to implement this modification in order to reduce CPU overhead, as taught by Voight (Para 0012, RDMAs may reduce CPU overhead in a data transfer).
Regarding claim 8, Lee in view of Lin further in view of Voight teaches the method of claim 7, wherein the active and standby units are coupled via an interconnect fabric within the appliance, and wherein the interconnect fabric supports DMA-based data replication (Lee, Para 4, a Digital Cross Connect Network Manager).
Regarding claim 9, Lee in view of Lin further in view of Voight teaches the method of claim 8, wherein the direct memory-transfer operation further comprises storing the content of the first memory block in a buffer of the interconnect fabric (Lin, Para 0049, Direct memory access (DMA) is a working manner in which input/output (I/O) switching is performed by hardware). It would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Lee to include the teaching of Lin. One of ordinary skill in the art would be motivated to implement this modification in order improve system performance, as taught by Lin (Para 0050, Because the operating system is bypassed, the RDMA quickly moves data from a system to the memory of the remote host through a network. Therefore, a large quantity of CPU resources may be saved, a system throughput is improved, overheads of external memory replication and context switching are eliminated, and memory bandwidth can be released to improve application system performance).
Claim 11 is the apparatus claim corresponding to the method claim 1, and is analyzed and rejected accordingly.
Claim 12 is the apparatus claim corresponding to the method claim 2, and is analyzed and rejected accordingly.
Claim 13 is the apparatus claim corresponding to the method claim 3, and is analyzed and rejected accordingly.
Claim 14 is the apparatus claim corresponding to the method claim 4, and is analyzed and rejected accordingly.
Claim 15 is the apparatus claim corresponding to the method claim 5, and is analyzed and rejected accordingly.
Claim 16 is the apparatus claim corresponding to the method claim 6, and is analyzed and rejected accordingly.
Claim 17 is the apparatus claim corresponding to the method claim 7, and is analyzed and rejected accordingly.
Claim 18 is the apparatus claim corresponding to the method claim 8, and is analyzed and rejected accordingly.
Claim 19 is the apparatus claim corresponding to the method claim 9, and is analyzed and rejected accordingly.
Claim 20 is the medium claim corresponding to the method claim 1, and is analyzed and rejected accordingly.
Conclusion
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/B.T.H./Examiner, Art Unit 2166
/SANJIV SHAH/Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2166