DETAILED ACTION
Claims 1-3, 6-9, 12-15, and 18 are pending.
Claims 4-5, 10-11, and 16-17 are canceled.
Claims 1-3, 6-9, 12-15, and 18 are rejected.
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 .
Continued Examination Under 37 CFR 1.114
A request for continued examination under 37 CFR 1.114, including the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e), was filed in this application after final rejection. Since this application is eligible for continued examination under 37 CFR 1.114, and the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e) has been timely paid, the finality of the previous Office action has been withdrawn pursuant to 37 CFR 1.114. Applicant's submission filed on 4/2/2026 has been entered.
Response to Arguments
The Examiner thanks the Applicant for amending the independent claims to address the 35 U.S.C. 112(a) rejections (Remarks p. 7). The 35 U.S.C. 112(a) rejections have been withdrawn.
Applicant’s following arguments with respect to the 35 U.S.C. 103 rejections (Remarks pp. 7-8) are moot in view of the Examiner’s new ground of rejections based on added references to address applicant’s amendments.
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, 6-7, 12-13, and 18 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Alberti (US 20150363181 A1) in view of Levit-Gurevich (US 20050091022 A1), Ghosh (US 20200344326 A1), and Park (KR 20170064703 A).
Regarding Claim 7, Alberti teaches a method, comprising:
an information handling system booting a first operating system (
Alberti discloses, “An install process in a VM environment may also include steps of creating and starting VMs…,” ¶ 0023.
The claimed “information handling system” is mapped to the system managing the disclosed “VM environment”.
The claimed “first operating system” is mapped to an operating system running on the disclosed “VM” that is started in the VM environment.),
wherein the first operating system (
Alberti discloses, “Automated cloning of a first VM to other created VMs may be useful in reducing user time spent on and interaction with (through a user input device) the software deployment process, and may provide error-free VM cloning and software deployment operations. Prior to cloning, the first VM may be populated (by a software installer) with common files useful for subsequently cloned VM's, including a software installer, individual software product components and configuration files specific to each software product component,” ¶ 0027, and “Application installer 142 may be run on the first virtual machine (e.g., VM1 110) in response to a user issuing a command to run installer 142 to hypervisor 106, through user input device 102,” ¶ 0037.
The claimed “provision service” is mapped to the installation service, including the services provided by the “application installer,” run on first virtual machine, mapped to “first operating system” that prepares the first VM for cloning.
Said installation service to provide a cloned virtual machine is a provision service.
Alberti discloses, “Software components (executables) C1 116, C2 126 and C3 136 may be installed in an automated fashion by software installers 112A, 112B and 112C and configured using configuration files C1 Cfg 114, C2 Cfg 124 and C3 Cfg 134, respectively,” ¶ 0027).);
reading, by the provision service, a file indicating a desired stack for the information handling system, wherein the desired stack specifies components including at least one second operating system, (
Alberti discloses, “Prior to cloning, the first VM may be populated (by a software installer) with common files useful for subsequently cloned VM's, including a software installer, individual software product components and configuration files specific to each software product component,” ¶ 0027,
“…a different number of VMs may be created (cloned) to correspond to a specific number of software components. For example, in an embodiment corresponding to a 2-component software product, 2 VMs may be created, and in a certain embodiment corresponding to a 5-component software product, 5 VMs may be created,” ¶ 0035, and
“Automated cloning of (first) VM1 110 to other VMs may be useful in reducing user time spent on and interaction with (through user input device 102) the software deployment process, and may provide error-free VM cloning and software deployment operations. Cloning may include all files present on the first VM VM1 110 including software installer 112A, configuration files C1 Cfg 114, C2 Cfg 124, and C3 Cfg 134, and software product components C1 116, C2 126 and C3 136,” ¶ 0047. Further, Alberti also discloses, “In certain embodiments all installed software components may be installed on virtual machines having a (first) operating system (e.g., Windows). In some embodiments, certain installed software components may be installed on virtual machines having a different (second) operating system (e.g., Linux). A user may create one (first) VM for each operating system, and install the operating system on it, as described in reference to FIG. 2. The installation process may then continue with the user providing the installation parameters corresponding to each unique type of the (first) VM. Application installer 142 may then copy the provided installation information to the second virtual machine and then signal deployment controller 104 to clone the VMs,” ¶ 0056.
The claimed “a file indicating a desired stack” is mapped to the configuration files specific to the software product components to be installed. The installer indicates a desired stack, or desired software components to be installed. A stack is interpreted as software components, because the present application’s specification states that “When a new HCI system is built for a customer, it is typically provisioned with a set of components referred to herein as a ‘stack.’ A stack may include an operating system, hypervisor, firmware, drivers, software, etc,” Specification Page 4, Lines 20-23.
Alberti discloses multiple configuration files and other files. However, according to MPEP 2144.04 V.B. Making Integral, it would have been obvious to make multiple configuration files into a single integral configuration file.
The file for the “subsequently cloned VM” (¶ 0027), which runs the second operating system, is obtained/read from the first VM.
The claimed “second operating system” is mapped to the operating system that will run on the disclosed “cloned VM”, or the VM that is cloned from the first VM.
The claimed “software application” is mapped to the disclosed “individual software product components”.
Paragraphs 29, 38, and 42 also discuss in further details.);
installing, by the provision service, the components specified by the desired stack (
Alberti discloses, “The software installer on each VM may complete the software install process by installing one or more software components designated (through a VM ID) for a particular VM, and customize the software component's configuration, as specified in a corresponding configuration file.” ¶ 0027, and “Once each virtual machine (e.g., VM1 110, VM2 120 and VM3 130) is started, software installers 112A, 112B and 112C may install a particular software component(s) on each VM, according to a unique virtual machine ID set on each VM partition. A unique virtual machine ID may include a machine hostname, serial number or other type of VM identifier. The software installer local to each VM (e.g., installer 112A, 112B and 112C, which may be similar to each other) may complete the component (e.g., C1 116, C2 126 and C3 136) installation using the installation/configuration information contained in configuration files C1 Cfg 114, C2 Cfg 124, and C3 Cfg 134 to tailor the deployment of a particular software component,” ¶ 0050);
and a(
Alberti discloses, “Cloned VMs may be started after the cloning process described in reference to FIG. 4,” ¶ 0049.).
Alberti does not teach wherein the specified components to be installed also include at least one firmware, and at least one driver. Alberti also does not teach wherein the first operating system resides on a first physical storage resource of the information handling system, wherein the second operating system is configured to host one or more virtual machines (VMs) and resides on a second physical storage resource of the information handling system, and adjusting, by the provision service, a Basic Input/Output System (BIOS) setting configured to cause the information handling system to boot the second operating system upon a subsequent boot of the information handling system.
However, Levit-Gurevich teaches wherein the specified components to be installed also include at least one firmware, and at least one driver (
Levit-Gurevich discloses, “The simulated code may be executed on the virtual machines, as a Guest code, in a virtual environment, e.g., a Direct Execution environment. The Guest code may be any software stack code, including Guest OS, firmware, device drivers, and applications,” ¶ 0011.).
Alberti and Levit-Gurevich are both considered to be analogous to the claimed invention because they are in the same field of computer systems. Therefore, it would have been obvious to someone of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified Alberti to incorporate the teachings of Levit-Gurevich and provide wherein the specified components to be installed also include at least one firmware, and at least one driver. Doing so would allow a system to control hardware or devices through the use of firmware and drivers. Doing so would also help allow greater flexibility in running the software on any given system (Levit-Gurevich discloses, “The simulation techniques may be used on a single-CPU system that can run a set of virtual machines, one for each simulated processor. The techniques described herein may simulate any number of processors, using virtual machines,” ¶ 0011.).
Alberti in view of Levit-Gurevich does not teach wherein the first operating system resides on a first physical storage resource of the information handling system, wherein the second operating system is configured to host one or more virtual machines (VMs) and resides on a second physical storage resource of the information handling system, and adjusting, by the provision service, a Basic Input/Output System (BIOS) setting configured to cause the information handling system to boot the second operating system upon a subsequent boot of the information handling system.
However, Ghosh teaches wherein the second operating system is configured to host one or more virtual machines (VMs) (
Ghosh discloses, “In certain implementations, when a request fora specific guest is received, then based on the guest OS's CPU architecture a cloud controller can install an OS on bare metal first and then create a guest VM on top of the host,” ¶ 0024.
After the combination of Alberti in view of Levit-Gurevich with Ghosh, the operating systems from Alberti in view of Levi-Gurevich are able to host virtual machines, according to Ghosh.).
Alberti in view of Levit-Gurevich, and Ghosh are both considered to be analogous to the claimed invention because they are in the same field of computer systems. Therefore, it would have been obvious to someone of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified Alberti in view of Levit-Gurevich to incorporate the teachings of Ghosh and provide wherein the second operating system is configured to host one or more virtual machines (VMs). Doing so would help provide increased support for running the virtual machines using the second operating system.
Alberti in view of Levit-Gurevich and Ghosh does not teach wherein the first operating system resides on a first physical storage resource of the information handling system, wherein the second operating system resides on a second physical storage resource of the information handling system, and adjusting, by the provision service, a Basic Input/Output System (BIOS) setting configured to cause the information handling system to boot the second operating system upon a subsequent boot of the information handling system.
However, Park teaches wherein the first operating system resides on a first physical storage resource of the information handling system, wherein the second operating system resides on a second physical storage resource of the information handling system (
Park discloses, “Referring first to FIG. 3, a computing system 50 according to an embodiment of the present invention may include a host device 100 and a mobile device 300,” Page 3, and “A normal boot when the ready boot is disabled by the above-described BIOS setting is shown in Fig. 6A, and a ready boot when the ready boot is enabled is shown in Fig. 6B. 6A and 6B, a first boot sector BSh and a first operating system OSh are stored in a first area 131 of the internal storage device 130 of the host apparatus 100, The second boot sector BSm and the second operating system OSm are stored in the first area 331 of the internal storage 330 of the apparatus 300,” Page 6.
After the combination of Alberti in view of Levit-Gurevich and Ghosh, with Park, both operating systems from Alberti in view of Levit-Gurevich and Ghosh now reside on respective physical storage resources of the information handling system, as specified by Park.).
and adjusting, by the provision service, a Basic Input/Output System (BIOS) setting configured to cause the information handling system to boot the second operating system upon a subsequent boot of the information handling system (
Park discloses, “In a computing device such as a personal computer (PC), when a user turns on the system, an operating system (OS) is loaded into the main memory of the computing device and the computing device is operated based on the loaded operating system do,” Page 2,
“And performing the ready boot to load the second operating system stored in the internal storage of the mobile device into the main memory when the ready boot is enabled,” Page 11,
and “Wherein the enabling or disabling of the ready boot is performed by a user through a BIOS setting interface provided by the BIOS,” Page 11.
Here, the BIOS setting interface is adjusted in order to boot a second operating system. After this is completed, the host system is rebooted, followed by the second operating system being booted based on the updated BIOS settings.
After the combination Alberti in view of Levit-Gurevich, and Ghosh, with Park, the BIOS setting interface from Park is adjusted via the provision service from Alberti.).
Alberti in view of Levit-Gurevich and Ghosh, and Park are both considered to be analogous to the claimed invention because they are in the same field of computer systems. Therefore, it would have been obvious to someone of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified Alberti in view of Levit-Gurevich and Ghosh to incorporate the teachings of Park and provide wherein the first operating system resides on a first physical storage resource of the information handling system, wherein the second operating system resides on a second physical storage resource of the information handling system, and adjusting, by the provision service, a Basic Input/Output System (BIOS) setting configured to cause the information handling system to boot the second operating system upon a subsequent boot of the information handling system. Doing so would help allow for supporting both operating systems in order to provide a more flexible user environment for a user (Park discloses, “By booting a plurality of computing devices using the mobile device, it is possible to effectively provide an individual user environment specific to a user, and even a general user without expert knowledge can easily implement a personal user environment specialized for the user have,” Abstract.).
Claim 1 and Claim 13 are an information handling system claim and an article of manufacture claim, respectively, corresponding to the method Claim 7. Therefore, Claim 1 and Claim 13 are rejected for the same reason set forth in the rejection of Claim 7.
Regarding Claim 12, Alberti in view of Levit-Gurevich, Ghosh, and Park teaches the method of claim 7, wherein the provision service further retrieves the components specified by the desired stack from a repository (
Alberti discloses, “Product repository 140 may include a master VM image having a complete set of installer information, including software product components C1 116, C2 126 and C3 136 to be copied to and installed on created virtual machines by application installer 142 and associated configuration file 144. … In embodiments, product repository 140 may be located on a computer hosting the VMs, which may be useful in speeding with the installation process. In certain embodiments, product repository 140 may on a shared file system and/or disk, on an ISO file, or on another type of system that can be accessed from each virtual machine,” ¶ 0034).
Claim 6 and Claim 18 are an information handling system claim and an article of manufacture claim, respectively, corresponding to the method Claim 12. Therefore, Claim 6 and Claim 18 are rejected for the same reason set forth in the rejection of Claim 12.
Claims 2, 8, and 14 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Alberti (US 20150363181 A1) in view of Levit-Gurevich (US 20050091022 A1), Ghosh (US 20200344326 A1), Park (KR 20170064703 A), and Gopalan (US 20200104189 A1).
Regarding Claim 8, Alberti in view of Levit-Gurevich, Ghosh, and Park teaches the method of claim 7. Alberti in view of Levit-Gurevich, Ghosh, and Park does not teach wherein the information handling system is a hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI) system.
However, Gopalan teaches wherein the information handling system is a hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI) system (
Gopalan discloses, “For example, in the case of virtual machines that are deployed within a hyper-converged infrastructure, workload placement across the physical resources of the infrastructure improves the scalability and efficiency of the data center in which the workloads are deployed,” ¶ 0009).
Alberti in view of Levit-Gurevich, Ghosh, and Park, and Gopalan are both considered to be analogous to the claimed invention because they are in the same field of computer systems. Therefore, it would have been obvious to someone of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified Alberti in view of Levit-Gurevich, Ghosh, and Park to incorporate the teachings of Gopalan and provide wherein the information handling system is a hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI) system. Doing so would allow for improved efficiency and scalability of deployment (Gopalan discloses, “For example, in the case of virtual machines that are deployed within a hyper-converged infrastructure, workload placement across the physical resources of the infrastructure improves the scalability and efficiency of the data center in which the workloads are deployed,” ¶ 0009.).
Claim 2 and Claim 14 are an information handling system claim and an article of manufacture claim, respectively, corresponding to the method Claim 8. Therefore, Claim 2 and Claim 14 are rejected for the same reason set forth in the rejection of Claim 8.
Claims 3, 9, and 15 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Alberti (US 20150363181 A1) in view of Levit-Gurevich (US 20050091022 A1), Ghosh (US 20200344326 A1), Park (KR 20170064703 A), and Lewis (US 20150363713 A1).
Regarding Claim 9, Alberti in view of Levit-Gurevich, Ghosh, and Park teaches the method of claim 7. Alberti in view of Levit-Gurevich, Ghosh, and Park does not teach wherein the first operating system and the provision service were installed during a manufacturing process of the information handling system.
However, Lewis teaches wherein the first operating system and the provision service were installed during a manufacturing process of the information handling system (
Lewis discloses, “To ensure positive customer experience, factory manufacturing of an information handling system usually includes extensive testing and configuration of the information handling system, to ensure operability of the information handling system, its various components, and the operating system and application programs installed thereon during the manufacturing process,” ¶ 0003).
Alberti in view of Levit-Gurevich, Ghosh, and Park, and Lewis are both considered to be analogous to the claimed invention because they are in the same field of computer systems. Therefore, it would have been obvious to someone of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified Alberti in view of Levit-Gurevich, Ghosh, and Park to incorporate the teachings of Lewis and provide wherein the first operating system and the provision service were installed during a manufacturing process of the information handling system. Doing so would allow for a more positive customer experience regarding the operating system and provision service, and also allow the operating system and the provision service to be tested before manufacturing is complete. (Lewis discloses, “To ensure positive customer experience, factory manufacturing of an information handling system usually includes extensive testing and configuration of the information handling system, to ensure operability of the information handling system, its various components, and the operating system and application programs installed thereon during the manufacturing process,” ¶ 0003.).
Claim 3 and Claim 15 are an information handling system claim and an article of manufacture claim, respectively, corresponding to the method Claim 9. Therefore, Claim 3 and Claim 15 are rejected for the same reason set forth in the rejection of Claim 9.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
Falkco (US 20160062783 A1): Managing Virtual Machines
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/ANDREW NMN SUN/Examiner, Art Unit 2195
/Aimee Li/Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2195
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