DETAILED ACTION
Claims 1-20 are pending in this application.
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 .
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112(b):
(b) CONCLUSION.—The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor regards as the invention.
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph:
The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the applicant regards as his invention.
Claims 1-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph, as failing to set forth the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor, or for applications subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, the applicant regards as the invention. Evidence that claims 1 and 15 fail(s) to correspond in scope with that which the inventor or a joint inventor, or for pre-AIA applications the applicant regards as the invention can be found in the reply filed 10/14/25. In that paper, the inventor or a joint inventor, or for pre-AIA applications the applicant has stated “…wherein the downtime preparation time is determined by the restoring device…”, and this statement indicates that the invention is different from what is defined in the claim(s) because paragraphs 0084 and 0098 of the specification discloses that the “downtime preparation time” is determined by an “restoration orchestrator” rather than the “restoration device” as Applicants have claimed.
For the purpose of this office action, the Examiner would interpret the “restoration orchestrator” as the determiner of the “downtime preparation time”.
As to claims 2-14 and 16-20, are rejected for the same reason as claims 1 and 15 respectively.
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, 2, 4, 5, 7-9, 11, 12, 14-16, 18 and 19 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over U.S. Pub. No. 2024/0126582 A1 to Jigalur et al. in view of U.S. Pub. No. 2017/0063615 A1 to Yang et al. and further in U.S. Pub. No. 2021/0072965 A1 to Masters et al. and further in view of U.S. Pub. No. 20240193327 A1 to Albero et al.
As to claim 1, Jigalur teaches a method for managing a restoration, the method comprising:
receiving, by a restoration orchestrator (Disaster Recovery Orchestrator 210), a restoration request for the restoration by a restoring device (Primary Cluster 194) (“…For example, in certain aspects, disaster recovery orchestrator 210 is configured to receive a disaster recovery specification from a user. The disaster recovery specification received by disaster recovery orchestrator 210 may include information about primary cluster 194 and secondary cluster 294. Disaster recovery orchestrator 210 may use this information to connect over a network to primary cluster 194 and/or secondary cluster 294 for backup and restore of resources of primary cluster 194 on the first site to secondary cluster 294 on the second site…For example, after receiving the disaster recovery specification, disaster recovery orchestrator 210 may create a backup schedule and a restore schedule for primary cluster 194. In accordance with the backup schedule, as shown at the first operation in FIG. 2, disaster recovery orchestrator may trigger backup service 214 to perform incremental backup of primary cluster 194…” paragraphs 0044-0046); and
forwarding the service requests to a backup device (Backup Service 214) (“…In certain aspects, the disaster recovery specification received by disaster recovery orchestrator 210 further provides details about a backup schedule and/or a restore schedule for primary cluster 194. In some cases, the backup and/or restore schedules indicate a frequency of incremental backup and/or incremental restore to occur for primary cluster 194 (e.g., every thirty minutes). In some cases, the backup and/or restore schedules indicate that restore operations are to occur subsequent to performing backup operations (e.g., immediately after and incremental backup is performed), while in some other cases, the backup and/or restore schedules may indicate that backup and restore operations are to be performed concurrently. Disaster recovery orchestrator 210 may use information provided in the received disaster recovery specification to determine when to trigger backup service 214 and restore service 216 to perform incremental backup and restore of primary cluster 194…For example, after receiving the disaster recovery specification, disaster recovery orchestrator 210 may create a backup schedule and a restore schedule for primary cluster 194. In accordance with the backup schedule, as shown at the first operation in FIG. 2, disaster recovery orchestrator may trigger backup service 214 to perform incremental backup of primary cluster 194…Returning to FIG. 3, after workload(s) 234 are started in secondary cluster 294, load balancer 212 may redirect service requests from a user to workloads 234 instantiated in secondary cluster 294 on a secondary node 242 to continue with normal operations…” paragraphs 0045/0046/0071).
Jigalur is silent with reference to forwarding the service requests to a digital twin, in response to the restoration request:
identifying a downtime preparation time for the restoration, wherein the downtime preparation time is determined by the restoration orchestrator;
collecting, during the downtime preparation time, service requests from the restoring device, wherein the service requests are serviced by the digital twin service during the downtime preparation time;
after the forwarding, making a determination that the downtime preparation time is complete; and
based on the determination, initiating a re-servicing of the restoring device, wherein the restoration is complete after the determination.
Yang teaches forwarding the service requests (request) to a server, in response to the restoration request:
identifying a downtime preparation time (Maintenance Window (MW)) for the restoration, wherein the downtime preparation time is determined by the restoration orchestrator (server) (“…Maintenance Window (MW)…In some embodiments, the tasks associated with a request may include a maintenance window (MW). The MW allows a task to be executed within a specific execution window (e.g., during a time period). For example, certain tasks may have a run-time impact on the customer. The MW enables such tasks to be scheduled to execute at a future time. In an embodiment, the MW may specify a time period (e.g., 5 seconds) taken by a task to complete execution. In some examples, the MW may specify the time taken by one or more sub-tasks associated with the task to be executed. In some embodiments, the MW associated with a task may be represented as a period of time that is required for the task to complete and may include a start time and an end time. In some examples, the MW may include additional information such as customer information and service specific information. In an example, information related to MW s associated with tasks may be stored in request/task data store 818…The MWs associated with a task may be task specific and may be configured differently for different tasks. For instance, the MW specified for a task that involves a resource (e.g., a server) to re-start may be different from a MW specified for a different task. In certain embodiments, the MW period is longer than the desired time of execution of the task or sub-tasks within the task that requires the MW…” paragraphs 0129/0130);
collecting, during the downtime preparation time, service requests from the restoring device, wherein the service requests are serviced by the backup service during the downtime preparation time (“…In an example, information related to MW s associated with tasks may be stored in request/task data store 818…” paragraph 0129/0130).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claim invention to modify the system of Jigalur with the teaching of Yang because the teaching of Yang would improve the system of Jigalur by providing a data structure for accumulating service requests for later processing.
Masters teaches after the forwarding, making a determination that the downtime preparation time is complete (predetermined time period, is calculated); and based on the determination, initiating a re-servicing of the restoring device, wherein the restoration is complete after the determination (recover by re-provisioning new instances to replace failed) (“…In a proposed embodiment, determining a deployment configuration of the plurality of microservices across the resources of the service infrastructure may comprise, for each resource, determining a probability of unavailability of the resource in a predetermined time period based on the outage distribution associated with the resource. Based on the probability of unavailability for each resource and the dependencies of the plurality of microservices, the step may further comprise determining a deployment configuration of the plurality of microservices across the resources of the service infrastructure. The deployment configuration may minimize a probability of unavailability of the plurality of microservices…In an embodiment, determining a deployment configuration of the plurality of microservices across the resources of the service infrastructure comprises employing a Monte-Carlo method to evaluate unavailability of the plurality of microservices for a plurality of different deployment configurations…In the example, based on the determined deployment configuration of the plurality of microservices across the resources of the service infrastructure, the probability of incurring downtime, i.e. unavailability of the plurality of microservices in the predetermined time period, is calculated. The unavailability is calculated using a Monte-Carlo method, enabling a probability to be determined, instead of a distribution. It is assumed that the service infrastructure is able to recover by re-provisioning new instances to replace failed, i.e. crashed, ones, but that a relatively small yet harmful amount of downtime occurs if anything from the critical set of microservices loses all of its instances…Purely by way of example, downtime may be thirty seconds (comprising detection of the failure and starting up of a replacement service). However, this may depend significantly on the system involved, and so the downtime maybe much higher or much lower, in other examples…” paragraphs 0036/0071-0073).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claim invention to modify the system of Jigalur and Yang with the teaching of Masters because the teaching of Masters would improve the system of Jigalur and Yang by providing a technique for minimize a probability of unavailability of the plurality of microservices (Masters paragraph 0036).
Albero teaches forwarding the service requests to a digital twin (digital twin) (“…The AI engine may construct the digital twin by simulating digital representations of hardware and software associated with the primary computer system. A digital twin may generally be a virtual, software-based representation that serves as the real-time digital counterpart of the primary computer system. As part of a redundant technology infrastructure, the digital twin may be used to simulate, validate, and/or understand different applications and their dependencies when running different components such as processors, memory cores, cloud services, load balancers, web servers, database servers, network servers, etc…To create the digital twin, the AI engine may capture state information from the primary computer system. The state information may include any suitable information regarding operation of the primary computer system. For example, the state information may include performance metrics associated with operation of hardware and software components of the primary computer system. The AI engine may store a list of hardware and software components in operation on the primary computer system. The AI engine may also be configured to detect, via a plurality of edge-node sensors, performance metrics of the hardware and software components of the primary computer system…The AI engine may apply machine learning algorithms that detect patterns indicating how the captured state information would evolve and how the state information used to build the digital twin would change while the primary computer remains offline. For example, the machine learning algorithms may detect patterns within financial data. Exemplary patterns may indicate that $10,000 in deposits posts to an account by the third day of a month. Based on this pattern, the digital twin, even when the primary computer system is offline, the digital twin may increase the last recorded balance by $10,000 on the third day of a new month. The digital twin may approve transactions that rely on the expected deposit of $10,000, even when a live connection to the primary computer system is unavailable…” paragraphs 0038/0039/0048).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claim invention to modify the system of Jigalur, Yang and Masters with the teaching of Albero because the teaching of Albero would improve the system of Jigalur, Yang and Masters by providing a virtual representation of an object or system designed to reflect a physical object accurately.
As to claim 2, Yang teaches the method of claim 1, further comprising: before collecting the service requests, sending a forwarding request to a client device (“… In certain embodiments, TAS module 204 may provide one or more TAS Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) 318 that enable TAS module 204 to interact with other modules in cloud infrastructure system 100 and for other modules to interact with TAS module 204. For example, the TAS APIs may include a system provisioning API that interacts with SDI module 206 via an asynchronous Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) based web services call to provision resources for the customer's subscription order. In one embodiment, TAS module 204 may also utilize the system provisioning API to accomplish system and service instance creation and deletion, switch a service instance to an increased service level, and associate service instances. An example of this is the association of a Java service instance to a fusion applications service instance to allow secure web service communications. The TAS APIs may also include a notification API that interacts with the services module 202 to notify the customer of a processed order. In certain embodiments, the TAS module 204 also periodically propagates subscription information, outages, and notifications (e.g. planned downtime) to services module 202…In certain embodiments, TAS module 204 periodically receives usage statistics for each of the provisioned services such as the amount of storage used, the amount data transferred, the number of users, and the amount of system up time and system down time from EM module 208. Overage framework 322 utilizes the usage statistics to determine whether over use of a service has occurred, and if so, to determine how much to bill for the overage, and provides this information to order management module 214…” paragraphs 0090/0091), wherein the forwarding request specifies sending the service requests to the restoration orchestrator.
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claim invention to modify the system of Jigalur, Albero and Masters with the teaching of Yang because the teaching of Yang improve the system of Jigalur, Albero and Masters by providing notification for client consumption.
As to claim 4, Albero teaches the method of claim 1, wherein the digital twin service comprises functionality that is substantially similar to second functionality of the restoring device.
As to claim 5, Jigalur teaches the method of claim 1, wherein the restoration orchestrator (Disaster Recovery Orchestrator 210) is external to the restoring device (Primary Cluster 194).
As to claim 7, Yang teaches the method of claim 1, wherein the downtime preparation time (maintenance window (MW)) is specified in the restoration request (“…Maintenance Window (MW)…In some embodiments, the tasks associated with a request may include a maintenance window (MW). The MW allows a task to be executed within a specific execution window (e.g., during a time period). For example, certain tasks may have a run-time impact on the customer. The MW enables such tasks to be scheduled to execute at a future time. In an embodiment, the MW may specify a time period (e.g., 5 seconds) taken by a task to complete execution. In some examples, the MW may specify the time taken by one or more sub-tasks associated with the task to be executed. In some embodiments, the MW associated with a task may be represented as a period of time that is required for the task to complete and may include a start time and an end time. In some examples, the MW may include additional information such as customer information and service specific information. In an example, information related to MW s associated with tasks may be stored in request/task data store 818…The MWs associated with a task may be task specific and may be configured differently for different tasks. For instance, the MW specified for a task that involves a resource (e.g., a server) to re-start may be different from a MW specified for a different task. In certain embodiments, the MW period is longer than the desired time of execution of the task or sub-tasks within the task that requires the MW…” paragraphs 0129/0130).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before effective filing date of the claim invention to modify the system of Jigalur, Yang, Masters and Albero with the teaching of Yang because the teaching of Yang improve the system of Jigalur, Yang, Masters and Albero by providing a technique for timely execution of tasks with minimal downtime.
As to claims 8 and 15, see the rejection of claim 1 above, expect for a non-transitory computer readable medium, a processor and a memory.
Jigalur teaches a non-transitory computer readable medium (Local Storage 122), a processor (CPU 116) and a memory (Memory 118).
As to claims 9 and 16, see the rejection of claim 2 above.
As to claims 11 and 18, see the rejection of claim 4 above.
As to claims 12 and 19, see the rejection of claim 5 above.
As to claim 14, see the rejection of claim 7 above.
Claims 3, 10 and 17 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over U.S. Pub. No. 2024/0126582 A1 to Jigalur et al. in view of U.S. Pub. No. 20170063615 A1 to Yang et al. and further in U.S. Pub. No. 2021/0072965 A1 to Masters et al. and further in view of U.S. Pub. No. 20240193327 A1 to Albero et al. as applied to claims 1, 8 and 15 above, and further in view of U.S. Pub. No. 2018/0347560 A1 to Fang et al.
As to claim 3, Jigalur as modified by Yang, Master and Albero teaches the method of claim 1, however it is silent with reference to wherein initiating the re-servicing comprises: sending a synchronization request to the digital twin device, wherein the synchronization request specifies synchronizing the digital twin device with the restoring device
Fang teaches the method of claim 1, wherein initiating the re-servicing comprises: sending a synchronization request (Synchronization) to the digital twin device, wherein the synchronization request specifies synchronizing the digital twin device (First Database 211) with the restoring device (Second Database 221) (“…The on-line system 210 may receive a service request 250 sent from a customer via router 230 though internet 240. The on-line system 210 may set up a connection with a customer to conduct transactions with the first database 211. During a planned event, the service request 250 from the customer may be switched from the on-line system 210 to the back-up system 220, and the back-up system 220 may respond to the service request 250. Data in the first database 211 in the on-line system 210, and data in the second database 221 in the back-up system 220 may be synchronized or replicated though a private network 260. Synchronization may be performed using a data replication operation in the first database 211 and in the second database 221, and a network switch may quick switch from the on-line system 210 to the back-up system 220 such that the back-up system 220 may provide continuous availability for the customer to avoid a long service outage time. In an embodiment, the private network 260 may be an optical network specially designed for data replication with a high transmission speed, and may use an alternate network rather than internet 240…” paragraph 0035).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claim invention to modify the system of Jigalur, Yang, and Albero and Masters with the teaching of Fang because the teaching of Fang would improve the system of Jigalur, Yang, and Albero and Masters by providing a technique for synchronizing data using a data replication operation in a first database and in a second database (Fang paragraph 0035).
As to claims 10 and 17, see the rejection of claim 3 above.
Claims 6, 13 and 20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over U.S. Pub. No. 2024/0126582 A1 to Jigalur et al. in view of U.S. Pub. No. 20170063615 A1 to Yang et al. and further in U.S. Pub. No. 2021/0072965 A1 to Masters et al. and further in view of U.S. Pub. No. 20240193327 A1 to Albero et al. as applied to claim 1, 8 and 15 above, and further in view of U.S. Pub. No. 2023/0115438 A1 to DeGraaf et al.
As to claim 6, Jigalur as modified by Yang, Master and Albero teaches the method of claim 1, however it is silent with reference to wherein the restoration orchestrator is internal to the restoring device.
DeGraaf teaches wherein the restoration orchestrator is internal to the restoring device (“…A backup orchestrator 716 may be configured to orchestrate a restore operation of a primary resource and/or resources upon which the primary resource depends to the remote object store 702 using a backup 718 of the primary resource. Even though the backup orchestrator 716 is illustrated as being remote to the remote object store 702, the backup orchestrator 716 may be hosted within the remote object store 702 or hosted outside (remote to) the remote object store 702. For example, the backup orchestrator 716 may be hosted through a node, a virtual machine, a container (e.g., a container within a kubernetes cluster), hardware, software, or combination thereof…” paragraph 0107).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claim invention to modify the system of Jigalur, Yang, and Albero and Masters with the teaching of DeGraaf because the teaching of DeGraaf would improve the system of Jigalur, Yang, and Albero and Masters by providing a restoration orchestrator that is locate to the client in order to minimize or reduce bandwidth constraints.
As to claims 13 and 20, see the rejection of claim 6 above.
Response to Arguments
Applicant's arguments filed 10/14/25 have been fully considered but they are not persuasive.
Applicants argued in substance the applied prior arts do not teach or suggest “…(i) "identifying a downtime preparation time for the restoration", (ii) "wherein the downtime preparation time is determined by the restoring device", (iii) "collecting, during the downtime preparation time, service requests from the restoring device", (iv) "forwarding the service requests to a digital twin device", and (v) "wherein the service requests are serviced by the digital twin service during the downtime preparation time"…”.
The Examiner disagrees.
In view of the 112(b) rejection, the claimed “…wherein the downtime preparation time is determined by the restoring device…”, indicates that the invention is different from what is defined in the claim(s) because of paragraphs 0084 and 0098 of the specification.
Additionally, the server of the Jigalur prior art is functionally equivalent the claimed “restoration orchestrator” because it determines the “downtime preparation time”.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure..
U.S. Pub. No. 2021/0406142 A1 to Dehganpour et al. and directed to system, method, and computer program product embodiments for a processor health monitoring system.
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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/CHARLES E ANYA/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2194