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 .
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.
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statement (IDS) submitted on March 20, 2023 is in compliance with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.97. Accordingly, the information disclosure statement is being considered by the examiner.
Specification
The lengthy specification has not been checked to the extent necessary to determine the presence of all possible minor errors. Applicant’s cooperation is requested in correcting any errors of which applicant may become aware in the specification.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 112
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.
Claim 5, 11, and 17 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph, as being indefinite for failing to particularly point out and distinctly claim 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.
Claims 5, 11, and 17 recite, using claim 5 for example language “migrating data stored in the storage capacity donated to the second storage pool”. The phrase “to the second storage pool” is unclear, as it can either refer to the destination of the data migration, or it can refer to the destination of the storage capacity donation. The claim limitation does not make clear which interpretation is intended. Examiner recommends reciting “migrating data stored in the donated storage capacity” if the phrase is intended to refer to the destination of the storage capacity donation, as this draws antecedent basis from parent claim 1 as the storage capacity donated from the first storage pool to the second storage pool so the “to the second storage pool” is unnecessary to recite in claim 5, and reciting “migrating data stored in the donated storage capacity to the second storage pool”, as in addition to the earlier comments concerning “the donated storage capacity”, then “to the second storage pool” clearly modifies “migrating data” instead. For the purpose of examination, it is assumed that the first suggestion is incorporated.
Claim Interpretation
MPEP § 2111.04(II) provides that “The broadest reasonable interpretation of a method (or process) claim having contingent limitations requires only those steps that must be performed and does not include steps that are not required to be performed because the condition(s) precedent are not met. For example, assume a method claim requires step A if a first condition happens and step B if a second condition happens. If the claimed invention may be practiced without either the first or second condition happening, then neither step A or B is required by the broadest reasonable interpretation of the claim. If the claimed invention requires the first condition to occur, then the broadest reasonable interpretation of the claim requires step A. If the claimed invention requires both the first and second conditions to occur, then the broadest reasonable interpretation of the claim requires both steps A and B.
Claims 9-14 are directed to method claims and thus require analysis concerning any contingent limitations.
Claim 9 recites
detecting a potential out-of-space condition in the second storage pool as a function of the capacity usage monitoring of the second storage pool; and
donating donor storage capacity from the donor pool of the first storage pool to the second storage pool in response to detection of a potential out-of-space condition in the second storage pool, so that donated storage capacity is transferred to the second storage pool.
The donating limitation is recited as contingent on detection of a potential out of space condition in the second storage pool, and this condition is explicitly recited as performed in the immediately prior limitation, so the donating limitation is required in the broadest reasonable interpretation of the claim.
Claim 11 recites
adding supplemental storage having a supplemental storage capacity to the second storage pool;
in response to the adding the supplemental storage capacity to the second storage pool, migrating data stored in the donated storage capacity.
For clarity of record, this incorporates the suggestion to address the indefiniteness issue as discussed above. The migration limitation is explicitly contingent on adding the supplemental storage, which is explicitly recited immediately prior, so the migration limitation is required in the broadest reasonable interpretation of the claim.
Claim 12 recites
in response to the detecting a potential out of space condition in the second storage pool, prompting a storage administrator to select a donor pool for donating storage capacity to the second storage pool.
The prompting limitation is explicitly contingent on detection of a potential out of space condition, which has been recited as a limitation in parent claim 9, so the prompting limitation is required in the broadest reasonable interpretation of the claim.
Claim 14 recites
detecting a potential out-of-space condition in the third storage pool as a function of the capacity usage monitoring of the third storage pool with respect to the first threshold;
converting donor storage capacity from the donor pool of the third storage pool to non-donor storage capacity in response to detection of a potential out-of-space condition in the third storage pool as a function of the capacity usage monitoring of the third storage pool with respect to the first threshold; and
donating donor storage capacity from the donor pool of the first storage pool to the third storage pool in response to detection of a potential out-of-space condition in the third storage pool as a function of the capacity usage monitoring of the third storage pool with respect to the second threshold, so that donated storage capacity is transferred to the third storage pool.
The converting donor storage capacity limitation is explicitly contingent on detection of a potential out of space condition with respect to the first threshold, which is recited as occurring in the detecting limitation immediately prior. As such, the converting limitation is required within the broadest reasonable interpretation of the claim. The donating donor storage capacity limitation is explicitly contingent on detection of a potential out of space condition with respect to the second threshold. Unlike with the first condition, this detection is not recited as occurring/required within claim 14 or parent claim 9, and therefore the donation limitation is not required within the broadest reasonable interpretation of the claim.
Claim Interpretation - 35 USC § 101
35 U.S.C. 101 reads as follows:
Whoever invents or discovers any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof, may obtain a patent therefor, subject to the conditions and requirements of this title.
MPEP § 2106.03 provides that “the BRI of machine readable media can encompass non-statutory transitory forms of signal transmission, such as a propagating electrical or electromagnetic signal per se. See In re Nuijten, 500 F.3d 1346, 84 USPQ2d 1495 (Fed. Cir. 2007). When the BRI encompasses transitory forms of signal transmission, a rejection under 35 U.S.C. 101 as failing to claim statutory subject matter would be appropriate. Thus, a claim to a computer readable medium that can be a compact disc or a carrier wave covers a non-statutory embodiment and therefore should be rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 as being directed to non-statutory subject matter. See, e.g., Mentor Graphics v. EVE-USA, Inc., 851 F.3d at 1294-95, 112 USPQ2d at 1134 (claims to a "machine-readable medium" were non-statutory, because their scope encompassed both statutory random-access memory and non-statutory carrier waves).”
Claims 1-8 are directed to a computer program product, where claim 1 recites “the computer program product comprises a computer readable storage medium having program instructions embodied therewith…”. On its face, the claim language does not explicitly exclude the non-statutory embodiments at issue in Nuijten and Mentor Graphics. In a review of the specification, applicant provides that “a computer readable storage medium, as that term is used in the present disclosure, is not to be construed as storage in the form of transitory signals per se…,” [0119]. Therefore, as applicant serve as their own lexicographer, the term “computer readable storage medium” is explicitly stated in the specification to exclude transitory signals, and therefore the broadest reasonable interpretation of the claim is now directed only to statutory embodiments and claims 1-8 do not merit a rejection under 35 U.S.C. 101.
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.
The factual inquiries for establishing a background for determining obviousness under 35 U.S.C. 103 are summarized as follows:
1. Determining the scope and contents of the prior art.
2. Ascertaining the differences between the prior art and the claims at issue.
3. Resolving the level of ordinary skill in the pertinent art.
4. Considering objective evidence present in the application indicating obviousness or nonobviousness.
This application currently names joint inventors. In considering patentability of the claims the examiner presumes that the subject matter of the various claims was commonly owned as of the effective filing date of the claimed invention(s) absent any evidence to the contrary. Applicant is advised of the obligation under 37 CFR 1.56 to point out the inventor and effective filing dates of each claim that was not commonly owned as of the effective filing date of the later invention in order for the examiner to consider the applicability of 35 U.S.C. 102(b)(2)(C) for any potential 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(2) prior art against the later invention.
Claims 1-3, 6-10, 12-16, and 18-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Jayaraman et al. (US 9,760,290, as presented in applicant’s IDS) in view of Sabloniere (US 2016/0179405).
Regarding claim 1, Jayaraman teaches a computer program product for processing requests to a storage system, wherein the computer program product comprises a computer readable storage medium having program instructions embodied therewith, the program instructions executable by a processor to cause operations (Col. 1, Line 48 – Col. 2, Line 11), the operations comprising:
providing a first storage pool which includes a donor storage pool having donor storage capacity (Fig. 2 shows a smart volume manager in a storage system, where “The Smart Volume Management Layer 206 identifies the Donor DGs (from DG-1, DG-2, DG-3) and creates the Dynamic Virtual Buffer DG 212 in a given system on the fly based on the need of the system. A Donor Disk Group (Donor DG) is a disk group that has excess unused disk space that is not in actual usage in the system. This excess/unused disk space is “Free space” that can be donated to the Dynamic Virtual Buffer-DG (DVB-DG) 212. The percentage of the disk space that can be donated to a DVB-DG 212 is configurable and controllable on the fly by a parameter called “donation percentage”, which identifies the percentage of space available for donation by DG-1, DG-2 and/or DG-3 shown in FIG. 2,” Col. 6, Lines 32-44);
monitoring capacity usage of a second storage pool having a total usable storage capacity (“The SVM continuously monitors file system usage and accommodates back the written data blocks from the DVB-DG to the original file system if the file system usage falls below a pre-determined threshold (e.g., 100%),” Col. 5, Lines 5-8);
detecting a potential out-of-space condition in the second storage pool as a function of the capacity usage monitoring of the second storage pool (“The Smart Volume Manager dynamically detects “filesystem full” incidents that are the result of an input/output (I/O) event, and redirects the I/O to a temporarily created buffer space,” Col. 5, Lines 16-19, where “with reference now to FIG. 3, consider client process 301, which may be a client device requesting that data be stored on a filesystem (i.e., a storage device). As shown by the first dotted line 303, the Smart Volume Manager 306 detects that Disk Group 305 is 100% full,” Col. 7, Lines 12-16 shows a specific example for an example disk group); and
donating donor storage capacity from the donor pool of the first storage pool in response to detection of a potential out-of-space condition in the second storage pool (“The Smart Volume Manager 306 then redirects the client process 301 to the newly-created buffer space the existing creates the redirects the client process 301 to the DVB-DG 212, as indicated by the second dotted line 307. Thus, the first dotted line 303 represents the detection by the Smart Volume Manager 306 of the 100% disk space usage in the filesystem represented by Disk Group (DG) 305, and the second dotted line 307 represents the activation and I/O redirection of the client process 301 to the DVB-DG 212 on the fly,” Col. 7, Lines 16-25).
Jayaraman fails to teach where the donor storage capacity is donated from the first pool to the second storage pool, so that donated storage capacity is transferred to the second storage pool. As disclosed above, the donated storage capacity becomes a temporary buffer for I/O’s, not a transferal of the donated storage capacity between the storage pools.
Sabloniere’s disclosure relates to resource assignment between storage pools, and as such comprises analogous art in the same field of endeavor of storage management.
As part of this disclosure, Sabloniere provides for a storage virtualization engine in Fig. 1 with multiple tiers of storage devices, see MDG tiers 1-3, where as part of this engine, Sabloniere discloses the ability to shift researches as managed disks between pools, see “A simple threshold-based trigger could instruct a virtualization layer to remove resources (such as MDisks if this technology is used) to be shifted from a source pool, wait until the removal is complete and insert the resource into a target pool. The decision making could be based on a more sophisticated approach such as verifying for more than one observation period the resource shifting recommendation is suitable. The auto-tiering would use existing algorithms and automation mechanisms in place to optimize again the source and target pools without at any time losing the LUN history,” [0007], see also [0006,0023,0027,0031].
An obvious modification can be identified: incorporating Sabloniere’s disclosure of shifting resources between pools into Jayaraman’s system. Such a modification reads upon the limitation of the claim, as Sabloniere identifies providing for shifting resources from one pool to another, reading upon transferring from the donor first pool to the target second pool, with Sabloniere and Jayaraman both providing for threshold based triggers.
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art prior to the effective filing date of the claimed invention to incorporate Sabloniere’s shifting capacity between pools into Jayaraman’s system, as “This approach does not cause LUN history to be forgotten by the auto-tiering analytics and the auto rebalance feature of auto-tiering will quickly re-optimized resource usage by workloads in each of the pools without creating any substantial temporary disorder to workloads,” [0006].
Regarding claim 2, the combination of Jayaraman and Sabloniere teaches the computer program product of claim 1 and further teaches wherein the donor storage capacity of the donor pool is virtual donor storage capacity (Jayaraman describes the donated temporary buffer as a virtual buffer, see Col. 5, Lines 9-11, and Sabloniere also discusses the disks and disk groups as a virtual storage pool, see [0021]).
Regarding claim 3, the combination of Jayaraman and Sabloniere teaches the computer program product of claim 1, and the combination further teaches wherein the donating donor storage capacity from the donor pool of the first storage pool to the second storage pool occurs automatically in response to detection of a potential out-of-space condition in the second storage pool, so that donated storage capacity is transferred automatically to the second storage pool (see “The Smart Volume Manager 306 then redirects the client process 301 to the newly-created buffer space the existing creates the redirects the client process 301 to the DVB-DG 212, as indicated by the second dotted line 307. Thus, the first dotted line 303 represents the detection by the Smart Volume Manager 306 of the 100% disk space usage in the filesystem represented by Disk Group (DG) 305, and the second dotted line 307 represents the activation and I/O redirection of the client process 301 to the DVB-DG 212 on the fly,” Jayaraman Col. 7, Lines 16-25 teaching an automated detection of the out of space condition and activation of the I/O redirection on the fly, where the claim 1 rationale incorporates Sabloniere’s shifting of capacity between pools as the action instead of the I/O redirection).
Regarding claim 6, the combination of Jayaraman and Sabloniere teaches the computer program product of claim 1 and the combination further teaches wherein the operations further comprise:
in response to the detecting a potential out of space condition in the second storage pool, prompting a storage administrator to select a donor pool for donating storage capacity to the second storage pool (“As described herein, in one or more embodiments the present invention installs a Smart Volume Manager (SVM) over a traditional disk volume manager for dynamically detecting file system incidents (e.g., input/output (I/O) write capacity to disk groups) and redirecting the file system I/O to a Dynamically created Virtual Buffer-Disk Group (DVB-DG). The SVM identified multiple Disk Groups (DGs) within the file system that have excess disk space, which can be donated from the DGs to the DVB-DG, thereby redirecting the file system I/O to the DVB-DG,” Jayaraman Col. 4, Line 61 – Col. 5, Line 4, where the dynamic creation of the virtual buffer disk group teaches this creation and selection of disk groups with excess disk space as occurring in response to the file system incident/out of space condition); and
throttling data write operations to the second storage pool until a donor pool selection is received and donor storage capacity is transferred from the selected donor pool to the second storage pool (“The Smart Volume Manager dynamically detects “filesystem full” incidents that are the result of an input/output (I/O) event, and redirects the I/O to a temporarily created buffer space. This permits the swapping of data back when the filesystem returns to a state that below it's full threshold,” Jayaraman Col. 5, Lines 16-21 teaches redirecting I/O’s away from the file disk to the temporary group until the threshold is resolved, i.e. throttling of any writes to the second storage pool until the usage threshold is lowered and reached; given the claim 1 combination, Sabloniere teaches increasing the capacity by switching disks between pools; the combination therefore teaches temporarily halting any writes to the second storage pool until capacity is increased by reduction in usage in Jayaraman or until the capacity is shifted over as in Sabloniere).
Regarding claim 7, the combination of Jayaraman and Sabloniere teaches the computer program product of claim 1, and Jayaraman fails to teach wherein the donor pool of the first storage pool and the second storage pool are each assigned to a tier of hierarchical storage in which each tier has a different storage data transfer rate as compared to that of another tier, and wherein the operations further comprise selecting the donor pool from a tier which has a storage data transfer rate which is one of 1) the same as the storage data transfer rate of the tier of second storage pool, and 2) lower than the storage data transfer rate of the tier of second storage pool.
As part of Sabloniere’s discussion of the storage system, Sabloniere in Fig. 1 depicts a managed disk group assigned to tier 1, one to tier 2, one to tier 3, where “For example, each data storage resource in a tier can have a specific performance metric measured over a set period of time, compared against a standard value for the metric,” [0022], and in a specific example of shifting resources, “For example, in a simple case, where there is excess capacity in tier 2 of pool 1 and excess demand in tier 2 of pool 2, then the outcome of shifting different resources from tier 2 of pool 1 to tier 2 of pool 2 may need to be considered,” [0023], showing an example where the selection of the donor pool comes from a same tier as the destination storage pool, see also [0018] for describing the different tiers and [0022] discussing performance metrics.
An obvious modification can further be identified: incorporating Sabloniere’s disclosure of a multi-tier system into Jayaraman’s disclosure. Such a modification reads upon the limitation of the claim, as Sabloniere describes different tiers of hierarchical storage for the pools and discloses an example of moving storage capacity from one tier of a pool to a same tier of a different pool, reading on branch 1).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art prior to the effective filing date of the claimed invention to incorporate Sabloniere’s disclosure of a multi-tier system into Jayaraman’s system, as providing multiple tiers of storage allows for the ability to allocate disks for different workloads based on expected performance metrics, taking advantage of different qualities of the different tiers, see [0018,0022].
Regarding claim 8, the combination of Jayaraman and Sabloniere teaches the computer program product of claim 1 and the combination further teaches wherein the operations further comprise:
providing a third storage pool which includes a donor storage pool having donor storage capacity (see Jayaraman Col. 6, Lines 32-44 as cited in claim 1, where multiple donor disk groups are identified, where for example, DG-1 corresponds to the first storage pool, and DG-3 corresponds to the third storage pool);
monitoring capacity usage of the third storage pool with respect to first and second thresholds of capacity usage wherein the second threshold is higher than the first threshold (“The magnitude of the DVB-DG 212 can be increased and/or decreased on the fly by adjusting the donation percentage parameter, thus making the DVB-DG 212 truly dynamic. However, the dynamic adjustment is subject to the actual usage of the disk space in both the donor disk group(s) and the DVB-DG 212,” Jayaraman Col. 6, Lines 51-56 teaches that while a donor disk has capacity for donation, the actual amount is subject to monitoring of the actual usage of disk space in the donor disk group; regarding the first and second thresholds, the first threshold is the donation percentage parameter, as a usage value corresponding to the donation percentage parameter would indicate that no more space can be donated/the donor disk may require more, and the second threshold is the 100%, as this represents a file system incident of 100% requiring the dynamic buffer, see also Jayaraman Col. 5, Lines 16-19 and Col. 7, Lines 12-16);
detecting a potential out-of-space condition in the third storage pool as a function of the capacity usage monitoring of the third storage pool with respect to the first threshold (while not explicitly contemplated, if donor disks donate excess free disk space, then necessarily, if the usage of a donor disk reaches a value corresponding to the donation percentage parameter, then the donor disk can no longer provide space for donation);
converting donor storage capacity from the donor pool of the third storage pool to non-donor storage capacity in response to detection of a potential out-of-space condition in the third storage pool as a function of the capacity usage monitoring of the third storage pool with respect to the first threshold (while not explicitly contemplated, if donor disks donate excess free disk space, then necessarily, if the usage of a donor disk reaches a value corresponding to the donation percentage parameter, then the donor disk can no longer provide space for donation and any usage above this amount means that the donor disk is actually using the space and the space is no longer free, i.e. no longer available for donation to the dynamic buffer group); and
donating donor storage capacity from the donor pool of the first storage pool to the third storage pool in response to detection of a potential out-of-space condition in the third storage pool as a function of the capacity usage monitoring of the third storage pool with respect to the second threshold, so that donated storage capacity is transferred to the third storage pool (“The Smart Volume Manager 306 then redirects the client process 301 to the newly-created buffer space the existing creates the redirects the client process 301 to the DVB-DG 212, as indicated by the second dotted line 307. Thus, the first dotted line 303 represents the detection by the Smart Volume Manager 306 of the 100% disk space usage in the filesystem represented by Disk Group (DG) 305, and the second dotted line 307 represents the activation and I/O redirection of the client process 301 to the DVB-DG 212 on the fly,” Jayaraman Col. 7, Lines 16-25, where this was relied upon for claim 1 rationale to describe donating to the second storage pool, Jayaraman Col. 6, Lines 1-5 teaches dynamically using the unused free space wherever space is required across the filesystem, i.e. the same creation of the virtual buffer-disk group would occur if DB-3 encountered a 100% full usage situation in the same manner as DB-2 encountering the 100% full situation; the claim 1 rationale provided Sabloniere’s disclosure and incorporation to modify this to be shifting of resources from the first storage pool to the second storage pool and also applies here to shifting resources from the first storage pool to the third storage pool).
Claim 9 recites a method identical to the operations performed by the processor in claim 1 and can therefore be rejected according to the same rationale.
Claims 10 and 12-14 are rejected according to the same rationale of claims 2 and 6-8 respectively. Examiner notes that while claim 8 addresses every limitation of claim 14, as discussed earlier in the claim interpretation section, claim 14 recites a contingent limitation not required within the broadest reasonable interpretation of the claim.
Regarding claim 15, Jayaraman teaches a computer system (Fig. 1), comprising:
a storage system having a plurality of storage pools (Fig. 1 storage system 123, shown in Fig. 2 to comprise multiple disk groups);
a host coupled to the storage system (Fig. 1, computer 101);
a processor of at least one component of the computer system (Fig. 1, processor 103); and
a computer program product for managing storage capacity of the storage system, wherein the computer program product comprises a computer readable storage medium having program instructions embodied therewith (Fig. 1, system 135 storing application programs, see also Col. 1, Line 48 – Col. 2, Line 11), the program instructions executable by a processor to cause operations identical to the operations of claim 1 and therefore rejected according to the same rationale.
Claims 16 and 18-20 are rejected according to the same rationale of claims 2 and 6-8 respectively.
Claims 4, 5, 11, and 17 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Jayaraman in view of Sabloniere and further in view of Fukatani et al. (US 2019/0332261).
Regarding claim 4, the combination of Jayaraman and Sabloniere teaches the computer program product of claim 1 but fails to teach wherein the operations further comprise:
notifying a storage administrator that donor storage capacity of the donor pool has been transferred to the second storage pool; and
adding supplemental storage having a supplemental storage capacity to the second storage pool.
Fukatani’s disclosure relates to managing storage allocation, and as such comprises analogous art for the same field of endeavor of storage management.
As part of this disclosure, Fukatani provides that “Accordingly, the present invention has been made in view of the above problems and an object thereof is to provide a storage system for performing priority control for each type of volumes, which detects a shortage of high-performance storage devices and notifying a storage administrator of the shortage, thereby the storage administrator can install additional storage devices before a performance problem occurs,” [0011].
An obvious modification can be identified: notifying storage administrators of storage situations and adding additional devices. Such a modification reads upon the limitation of the claim, as while Fukatani notifies the administrator of upcoming shortages, as incorporated into the system of Jayaraman as modified by Sabloniere, Jayaraman’s smart volume manager can notify a storage administrator of changes to storage allocation. In addition, Fukatani’s installation of additional storage devices reads upon the addition of supplemental storage.
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art prior to the effective filing date of the claimed invention to incorporate Fukatani’s notification to storage administrators and adding additional devices into Jayaraman’s disclosure, as this allows a user or administrator to physically add additional storage devices before performance problems occur, [0011], not just relying on the auto-tiering/redirection of Jayaraman and Sabloniere.
Regarding claim 5, the combination of Jayaraman, Sabloniere, and Fukatani teaches the computer program product of claim 4 and the combination further teaches wherein the operations further comprise:
in response to the adding the supplemental storage capacity to the second storage pool, migrating data stored in the donated storage capacity (“When the filesystem falls below 100% usage and if the “written data blocks” can be accommodated back to the original filesystem, then the Smart Volume Manager (i.e., within the Smart Volume Management Layer 206) writes back all the data blocks which are temporarily stored in buffer space and re-establishes the I/O back to the original filesystem/volume,” Jayaraman Col. 6, Line 63 – Col. 7, Line 2); and
reverting the donated storage capacity of the donor pool back to the donor pool of the first storage pool so that the reverted donor capacity is available for donation to another storage pool (while not explicitly stated, Jayaraman discloses that “The Smart Volume Manager identifies the unused free space across disk/volume groups in the system, and dynamically uses that unused free space whenever and wherever space is required across any of the filesystem or volumes with in the system boundary,” Col. 6, Lines 1-5, teaching that the donated capacity is utilized as needed, so after one file system incident resolves, then the free space can be freed up for another file system that requires the space).
Claims 11 and 17 are rejected according to the same rationale of claims 3, 4, and 5 collectively. Examiner acknowledges that claims 3 and 4/5 are separately dependent on claim 1, but none of the subject matter within claims 3 and 4/5 require a different interpretation of Jayaraman, Sabloniere, or Fukatani in order to reject claims 11 and 17, so while claims 3-5 do not contain claims 11 and 17 individually, the subject matter of claims 11 and 17 can collectively be addressed by these three claims.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
Greenwood et al. (US 10,193,821) discloses capacity planning for storage pools,
Agombar et al. (US 10,635,344, as presented in applicant’s IDS) discloses allocating storage capacity to a spare space capacity,
Eda et al. (US 10,592,125), Tyrrell et al. (US 2007/0239793), Asano et al. (US 2008/0086616), Sugino et al. (US 2008/0147960), Satoyama et al. (WO 2011/135635), disclose monitoring storage pool capacity, but handle situations only by migrating data between storage pools/segments
Okada et al. (US 2012/0272021), Lewis et al. (US 2013/0019071), Yamamoto et al. (WO 2017/149581) disclose monitoring storage pool capacity and the ability to manage pools,
Chamness et al. (US 2019/0272113) discloses monitoring storage capacity for a storage system.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to AARON D HO whose telephone number is (469)295-9093. The examiner can normally be reached Mon-Fri 8:00-4:00 CT.
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/A.D.H./Examiner, Art Unit 2139
/REGINALD G BRAGDON/Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2139
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