DETAILED ACTION
The present application, filed on or after March 16, 2013, is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA .
Claims 1-20 are pending.
Claim Rejections - 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.
Claims 1-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 because the claimed invention recites a judicial exception and is directed to that judicial exception, an abstract idea, as it has not been integrated into practical application. The claims further do not recite significantly more than the judicial exception. Examiner has evaluated the claims under the framework provided in the 2019 Patent Eligibility Guidance published in the Federal Register 01/07/2019 and has provided such analysis below.
Step 1:
Claims 1-11 are directed towards a process (i.e., method). Claims 12-20 are directed towards a machine (i.e., non-transitory machine-readable medium).
Step 2A Prong 1:
In order to evaluate the Step 2A inquiry “Is the claim directed to a law of nature, a natural
phenomenon or an abstract idea?” we must determine, at Step 2A Prong 1, whether the claim recites a law of nature, a natural phenomenon or an abstract idea.
Claims 1 and 12 recite judicial exceptions in the form of abstract ideas. Claims 1 and 12 recite the mental process: “selection of a particular service”.
Step 2A Prong 2:
Do the claims recite additional elements that integrate the judicial exception into a practical application?
Claims 1 and 12 recite the additional elements:
“displaying, in a graphical user interface (GUI), representations of health status for a plurality of different services of the system, each representation for a respective service showing health status for the respective service over a first particular time period” and
“displaying representations of health status data for each of a plurality of different aspects of the particular service, each representation for a respective aspect of the service showing operational status for the respective aspect of the service over a second particular time period”.
Such additional element(s) represent insignificant extra-solution data output activity MPEP 2106.05(g) which does not integrate the judicial exception into a practical application (Printing or downloading generated menus, Ameranth, 842 F.3d at 1241-42, 120 USPQ2d at 1854-55).
Step 2B:
Do the claims recite additional elements that amount to significantly more than the judicial exception?
As per claims 1 and 12, the claims do not include additional elements, alone or in combination, that are sufficient to amount to significantly more than the judicial exception. As discussed above with respect to integration of the abstract idea into a practical application, the additional elements amount to no more than insignificant extra-solution data output activity MPEP 2106.05(g) which do not amount to significantly more than the abstract idea. Furthermore, the additional elements are well-understood, routine, and conventional in the field because it is merely data transmission buySAFE, Inc. v. Google, Inc., 765 F.3d 1350, 1355, 112 USPQ2d 1093, 1096 (Fed. Cir. 2014) (computer receives and sends information over a network).
Having concluded analysis within the provided framework, independent claims 1 and 12 do not
recite patent eligible subject matter under 35 U.S.C. § 101.
Dependent claims 2-11 and 13-20 do not recite additional elements that integrate the judicial exception into a practical application or amount to significantly more than the abstract idea. Therefore, claims 2-11 and 13-20 are not eligible subject matter under 35 U.S.C § 101.
Claims 2 and 13 recite the additional elements: “the system is a network management system that manages a plurality of groups of datacenters for a plurality of different tenants” and “the plurality of different services comprises (i) a set of common multi-tenant services and (ii) a set of services belonging to tenant-specific service instances”. Such additional element(s) represent linking the judicial exception to the technological environment or field of use MPEP 2106.05(h) which does not integrate the judicial exception into a practical application or amount to significantly more than the abstract idea.
Claims 3 and 14 recite the additional elements: “the set of common multi-tenant services comprises services accessed by the plurality of different tenants” and “each tenant-specific service instance performs a respective service of the network management system for a respective group of datacenters of a respective tenant”. Such additional element(s) represent linking the judicial exception to the technological environment or field of use MPEP 2106.05(h) which does not integrate the judicial exception into a practical application or amount to significantly more than the abstract idea.
Claims 4 and 15 recite the additional elements: “the system is implemented in a Kubernetes cluster within a public cloud” and “the plurality of different services are Kubernetes microservices”. Such additional element(s) represent linking the judicial exception to the technological environment or field of use MPEP 2106.05(h) which does not integrate the judicial exception into a practical application or amount to significantly more than the abstract idea.
Claims 5 and 16 recite the additional elements: “the health status data for the plurality of different services specifies, over the first particular time period, whether each of the different services is operational, degraded, or nonoperational”. Such additional element(s) represent linking the judicial exception to the technological environment or field of use MPEP 2106.05(h) which does not integrate the judicial exception into a practical application or amount to significantly more than the abstract idea.
Claims 6 and 17 recite the additional elements: “the particular service is nonoperational when at least one aspect of the particular service is nonoperational”. Such additional element(s) represent linking the judicial exception to the technological environment or field of use MPEP 2106.05(h) which does not integrate the judicial exception into a practical application or amount to significantly more than the abstract idea.
Claims 7 and 18 recite the additional elements: “the particular service is nonoperational when at least one of a first subset of the aspects of the particular service is nonoperational and is degraded when at least one of a second subset of the aspects of the particular service is nonoperational”. Such additional element(s) represent linking the judicial exception to the technological environment or field of use MPEP 2106.05(h) which does not integrate the judicial exception into a practical application or amount to significantly more than the abstract idea.
Claims 8 and 19 recite the additional elements: “the representations of health status for at least a set of the services comprises representations of health status for each of a plurality of replicas of the services of the set of services executing in the network over the first particular time period”. Such additional element(s) represent linking the judicial exception to the technological environment or field of use MPEP 2106.05(h) which does not integrate the judicial exception into a practical application or amount to significantly more than the abstract idea.
Claim 9 recite the additional elements: “for a specific service, different replicas of the specific service have different health statuses at a particular time”. Such additional element(s) represent linking the judicial exception to the technological environment or field of use MPEP 2106.05(h) which does not integrate the judicial exception into a practical application or amount to significantly more than the abstract idea.
Claims 10 and 20 recite the additional elements: “the representations of the health status data for the plurality of different aspects of the particular service provides operational status for each of the different aspects on each of a plurality of different replicas of the particular service”. Such additional element(s) represent linking the judicial exception to the technological environment or field of use MPEP 2106.05(h) which does not integrate the judicial exception into a practical application or amount to significantly more than the abstract idea.
Claim 11 recite the additional elements: “the system is implemented in a Kubernetes cluster”. Such additional element(s) represent linking the judicial exception to the technological environment or field of use MPEP 2106.05(h) which does not integrate the judicial exception into a practical application or amount to significantly more than the abstract idea. Claim 11 further recites the additional element: “wherein each of the different replicas of the particular service executes on a different node of the cluster”. Such additional element(s) represent adding the words “apply it” (or an equivalent) with the judicial exception, or mere instructions to implement an abstract idea on a computer, or merely uses a computer as a tool to perform an abstract idea MPEP 2106.05(f) which does not integrate the judicial exception into a practical application or amount to significantly more.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 102
The following is a quotation of the appropriate paragraphs of 35 U.S.C. 102 that form the basis for the rejections under this section made in this Office action:
A person shall be entitled to a patent unless –
(a)(1) the claimed invention was patented, described in a printed publication, or in public use, on sale, or otherwise available to the public before the effective filing date of the claimed invention.
(a)(2) the claimed invention was described in a patent issued under section 151, or in an application for patent published or deemed published under section 122(b), in which the patent or application, as the case may be, names another inventor and was effectively filed before the effective filing date of the claimed invention.
Claims 1, 4, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 15, 19, 20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(2) as being anticipated over Chitalia et al. US 20210099368 A1.
Regarding claim 1, Chitalia teaches the invention as claimed including:
A method for providing health status for a system implemented in a network ([0005] The techniques provide visibility into operational performance and infrastructure resource), the method comprising:
displaying, in a graphical user interface (GUI), representations of health status for a plurality of different services of the system, each representation for a respective service showing health status for the respective service over a first particular time period (Fig 7B; Cluster Dashboards Fig 10; Fig 11; Fig 13; [0062] Dashboard 203 may also present information about the health and risk for one or more virtual machines 148 or other resources within data center 110. In some examples, “health” may correspond to an indicator that reflects a current state of one or more virtual machines 148; [0086] One or more reports may be generated for a specified time period; [0269] For example, assume a cluster C1 has N resources of which k are in a healthy state and m are in an unhealthy status at interval t1);
upon receiving selection of a particular service, displaying representations of health status data for each of a plurality of different aspects of the particular service, each representation for a respective aspect of the service showing operational status for the respective aspect of the service over a second particular time period (Fig 14 Switching Clusters; Fig 15 Cluster Specific View; [0060] Dashboard 203 may, in response to user input, cause configurations to be made to aspects of data center 110 or projects executing on one or more virtual machines 148 of data center 110 relating to network resources, data transfer limitations or costs, storage limitations or costs, and/or accounting reports; [0086] One or more reports may be generated for a specified time period; [0269] At interval t2, cluster C1 can be in a different state, such as N′ resources, k′ are healthy and m′ are unhealthy).
Regarding claim 4, Chitalia teaches the method of claim 1.
Chitalia further teaches wherein: the system is implemented in a Kubernetes cluster within a public cloud ([0005] The techniques may provide advantages within, for example … public enterprise cloud environments; [0035] Cloud-based computing clusters may, for example, be different cloud environments, such as various combinations of OpenStack cloud environments, Kubernetes cloud environments or other computing clusters, domains, networks and the like); and
the plurality of different services are Kubernetes microservices ([0202] Other type of groups may include an OpenStack or other project that is assigned a collection of instances, a Kubernetes Pod, a Kubernetes namespace, a Kubernetes replication controller, a Kubernetes service).
Regarding claim 8, Chitalia teaches the method of claim 1.
Chitalia further teaches wherein the representations of health status for at least a set of the services comprises representations of health status for each of a plurality of replicas of the services of the set of services executing in the network over the first particular time period (Fig 10; [0273] multi-cluster dashboard system 901 is associated with a plurality of clusters of different OpenStack installations, and each cluster region 1022 of user interface 120 includes eight graphical tiles showing counts for user-specified OpenStack elements for the cluster. In this OpenStack example, the monitored OpenStack elements include Keystone services for identity management within an OpenStack cloud, Neutron services for network management, Nova services for virtual machine management, Alarms, Aggregates, Hosts, Projects and Instances for the corresponding compute clusters).
Regarding claim 9, Chitalia teaches the method of claim 8.
Chitalia further teaches wherein, for a specific service, different replicas of the specific service have different health statuses at a particular time (Fig 10 different healths of services).
Regarding claim 10, Chitalia teaches the method of claim 1.
Chitalia further teaches wherein the representations of the health status data for the plurality of different aspects of the particular service provides operational status for each of the different aspects on each of a plurality of different replicas of the particular service (Fig 10; [0273] For each defined group of elements, the corresponding graphical tile lists an integer count of the number of elements of that type being monitored within the color. An indicator such as a color of the tile, e.g., green or red, provides an indication as to whether the corresponding SLA defined for the group of elements is being met. In this example, four types of OpenSource elements represented within cluster 1022B are healthy while five types of OpenSource elements (Alarms, Aggregates, Hosts, Projects and Interfaces) are observed and reported as unhealthy based upon their SLA requirements in view of the collected performance data.).
Regarding claim 11, Chitalia teaches the method of claim 10.
Chitalia further teaches wherein the system is implemented in a Kubernetes cluster ([0035] Cloud-based computing clusters may, for example, be different cloud environments, such as various combinations of OpenStack cloud environments, Kubernetes cloud environments), wherein each of the different replicas of the particular service executes on a different node of the cluster ([0226] In a typical cloud environment, an element has ‘member-of’ relationships with one or more groups of elements (alternatively referred to as ‘parent’ elements). For example, an OpenStack host can be a member of several host aggregates. A Kubernetes container can be a member of a pod, a replication controller, a namespace, and several different services).
Regarding claim 12, it is the non-transitory machine-readable media of claim 1. Therefore, it is rejected for the same reasons as claim 1.
Chitalia further teaches A non-transitory machine-readable medium storing a program which when executed by at least one processing unit provides health status for a system implemented in a network, the program comprising sets of instructions ([0294] the functions may be stored, as one or more instructions or code, on and/or transmitted over a computer-readable medium).
Regarding claims 15, 19, 20, they are the non-transitory machine-readable media of claims 4, 8, and 10 respectively. Therefore, they are rejected for the same reasons as claims 4, 8, and 10 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 2, 3, 13, 14 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Chitalia et al. US 20210099368 A1 in view of Hannon US 11245748 B1.
Regarding claim 2, Chitalia teaches the method of claim 1.
Chitalia further teaches wherein: the system is a network management system that manages a plurality of groups of datacenters for a plurality of different tenants (Fig 1; Clusters 902 may be separate cloud-based computing networks, computing domains or projects, and may be co-located in a common overall computing environment or located in different environments, such as different data centers); and
the plurality of different services comprises (i) a set of common multi-tenant services (Fig 10 Cluster Specific Services Keystone, Nuetron, Nova, Alarms, etc.; [0273] In this example, multi-cluster dashboard system 901 is associated with a plurality of clusters of different OpenStack installations, and each cluster region 1022 of user interface 120 includes eight graphical tiles showing counts for user-specified OpenStack elements for the cluster. In this OpenStack example, the monitored OpenStack elements include Keystone services for identity management within an OpenStack cloud, Neutron services for network management, Nova services for virtual machine management, Alarms, Aggregates, Hosts, Projects and Instances for the corresponding compute clusters).
Chitalia does not explicitly teach the plurality of different services comprises (ii) a set of services belonging to tenant-specific service instances
However, Hannon teaches the plurality of different services comprises (ii) a set of services belonging to tenant-specific service instances (Tenants corresponding to clients 112, 114, and 116 may utilize clients 112, 114, and 116 to request performance of tenant workloads by the cluster of host nodes represented by host node 108. A tenant workload may be any type of workload, such as, for example, data processing, image processing, transaction processing, sensor monitoring, scientific calculations, forecasts, predictions, or the like, Col 5 12-19).
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the invention to have combined Hannon’s nodes performing tenant-specific workloads with the system of Chitalia. A person of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to make this combination to provide Chitalia’s system with the advantage of monitoring health of resources performing tenant workloads (see Hannon Col 4 61-63 Proxied node 106 also sends health status of containers in each of the plurality of pods while running the tenant workload to controller node 104).
Regarding claim 3, Chitalia and Hannon teach the method of claim 2.
Chitalia further teaches wherein: the set of common multi-tenant services comprises services accessed by the plurality of different tenants ([0273] multi-cluster dashboard system 901 is associated with a plurality of clusters of different OpenStack installations, and each cluster region 1022 of user interface 120 includes eight graphical tiles showing counts for user-specified OpenStack elements for the cluster. In this OpenStack example, the monitored OpenStack elements include Keystone services for identity management within an OpenStack cloud, Neutron services for network management, Nova services for virtual machine management, Alarms, Aggregates, Hosts, Projects and Instances for the corresponding compute clusters; Examiner notes: the services of the cluster run for all clients of the cluster for operation of the cluster).
Hannon further teaches each tenant-specific service instance performs a respective service of the network management system for a respective group of datacenters of a respective tenant (Tenants corresponding to clients 112, 114, and 116 may utilize clients 112, 114, and 116 to request performance of tenant workloads by the cluster of host nodes represented by host node 108. A tenant workload may be any type of workload, such as, for example, data processing, image processing, transaction processing, sensor monitoring, scientific calculations, forecasts, predictions, or the like, Col 12-19).
Regarding claims 13 and 14, they are the non-transitory machine-readable media of claims 2 and 3 respectively. Therefore, they are rejected for the same reasons as claims 2 and 3 respectively.
Claims 5, 6, 7, 16, 17, 18 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Chitalia et al. US 20210099368 A1 in view of Mollema https://stackoverflow.com/questions/52027674/whats-the-difference-between-unhealthy-vs-degraded-net-health-check-status.
Regarding claim 5, Chitalia teaches the method of claim 1.
Chitalia further teaches wherein the health status data for the plurality of different services specifies, over the first particular time period, whether each of the different services is operational, degraded, or nonoperational ([0269] a cluster C1 has N resources of which k are in a healthy state and m are in an unhealthy status at interval t1).
While Chitalia teaches displaying health as good, at risk, and bad ([0253]), it does not explicitly teach wherein the health status data for the plurality of different services specifies, over the first particular time period, whether each of the different services is nonoperational.
However, Mollema teaches wherein the health status data for the plurality of different services specifies, over the first particular time period, whether each of the different services is degraded (A "degraded" check could be used for checks that did succeed but are slow or unstable. E.g. a simple database query did succeed but took more than a second. Moving traffic to another instance is probably a good idea until the problem has resolved).
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the invention to have combined Mollema’s Degraded Health Checks with the system of Chitalia. A person of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to make this combination to provide Chitalia’s system with the advantage of differentiating different degrees of Kubernetes resource unhealthiness (see Mollema You could say that a "degraded" health check maps to the "readiness" probe and an "unhealthy" check maps to the "liveness" probe).
Regarding claim 6, Chitalia and Mollema teach the method of claim 5.
Chitalia further teaches wherein the particular service is nonoperational when at least one aspect of the particular service is nonoperational ([0062] if policy agent 205 is not receiving heartbeats from a host, then policy agent 205 may characterize that host and all of its instances as unhealthy. Policy controller 201 may update dashboard 203 to reflect the health of the relevant hosts, and may indicate that reason for the unhealthy state is one or more “missed heartbeats.”).
Regarding claim 7, Chitalia and Mollema teach the method of claim 5.
Chitalia further teaches wherein the particular service is nonoperational when at least one of a first subset of the aspects of the particular service is nonoperational ([0062] if policy agent 205 is not receiving heartbeats from a host, then policy agent 205 may characterize that host and all of its instances as unhealthy. Policy controller 201 may update dashboard 203 to reflect the health of the relevant hosts, and may indicate that reason for the unhealthy state is one or more “missed heartbeats.”).
Mollema further teaches wherein the particular service is degraded when at least one of a second subset of the aspects of the particular service is nonoperational (A "degraded" check could be used for checks that did succeed but are slow or unstable. E.g. a simple database query did succeed but took more than a second; A failed readiness probe says: The application is OK but not yet ready to serve traffic; You could say that a "degraded" health check maps to the "readiness" probe).
Regarding claims 16, 17, and 18, they are the non-transitory machine-readable media of claims 5, 6, and 7 respectively. Therefore, they are rejected for the same reasons as claims 5, 6, and 7 respectively.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the
examiner should be directed to HARRISON LI whose telephone number is (703) 756-1469. The
examiner can normally be reached Monday-Friday 9:00am-5:30pm ET.
Examiner interviews are available via telephone, in-person, and video conferencing
using a USPTO supplied web-based collaboration tool. To schedule an interview, applicant is
encouraged to use the USPTO Automated Interview Request (AIR) at
http://www.uspto.gov/interviewpractice.
If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s
supervisor, Aimee Li can be reached on (571) 272-4169. Information regarding the status of published or unpublished applications may be obtained from Patent Center. Unpublished application information in Patent Center is available to registered users. To file and manage patent submissions in Patent Center, visit: https://patentcenter.uspto.gov. Visit https://www.uspto.gov/patents/apply/patent-center for more information about Patent Center and https://www.uspto.gov/patents/docx for information about filing in DOCX format. For additional questions, contact the Electronic Business Center (EBC) at 866-217-9197 (toll-free). If you would like assistance from a USPTO Customer Service Representative, call 800-786-9199 (IN USA OR CANADA) or 571-272-1000.
/H.L./
Examiner, Art Unit 2195
/Aimee Li/Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2195