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 .
DETAILED ACTION
Response to Amendment
This is in response to applicant’s amendment/response filed on 12/29/2025, which has been entered and made of record. Claims 1, 8, 15, 21-22, 24 have been amended. Claims 3, 10, 23 are canceled. Claim 25 is new. Claims 1-2, 4-9, 11-22, 25 are pending in the application.
Response to Arguments
Applicant's arguments filed on 12/29/2025 regarding claims rejection under 35 U.S.C 103 have been fully considered but they are not persuasive.
Applicant submits “Nevalainen and Dirla, fails to disclose, teach, or suggest each and every feature of the amended independent claims. In particular, independent Claim 1 as amended recites, with a similar recitation in amended Claims 8 and 15,” (Remarks, Page 11.)
The examiner disagrees with Applicant’s premises and conclusion. Ullah discloses defining at least a number of datacenter computing components for the physical datacenter installation and a relative position of the datacenter computing components within the physical datacenter installation (Ullah, Fig. 5, Fig. 11, Fig. 12, Page 322, “we modeled components comprises physical layer.” “We keep racks in rows at a pitch of around two meters according to DC layout standards. The user will have to enter the number of racks and number of servers per rack. The simulator automatically organizes into rows according to the specified dimensions as shown in Fig. 5.” Page 336, “A single server can be selected and moved to the desired rack as shown in Fig. 12. Servers with high temperature can be moved to low-temperature region to maintain thermal balance. After relocation of a single server or a group of servers, intra rack cross coefficients matrix and inter racks cross coefficient matrix are recalculated automatically.” Server relocation indicates a relative position of the server.); and
generating a modification recommendation for the installation characteristics associated with the physical datacenter installation (Ullah, Page 336, “To model this our simulator allows users to choose servers with high temperature and move to lower temperature regions.” “This module helps users to foresee the temperature distribution of different configuration and arrangement of servers and racks as well as CRAC units.”. Page 337, “These techniques are chosen to predict hotspots as they yield predictions with reasonable accuracy and are computationally not that intensive” Page 339, “The simulator demonstrates entire temperature space in 3D to show the area with most heat and allow the user to pinpoint the contribution of each node in hotspots formation. This will allow the administrator to take several other precautionary steps such as modifying the workload on a server developing hotspots more frequently or for a longer period of time, devising task migration strategies or relocating high processing server racks near CRAC units.” The area with most heat can be a modification recommendation.).
Double Patenting
The nonstatutory double patenting rejection is based on a judicially created doctrine grounded in public policy (a policy reflected in the statute) so as to prevent the unjustified or improper timewise extension of the “right to exclude” granted by a patent and to prevent possible harassment by multiple assignees. A nonstatutory double patenting rejection is appropriate where the conflicting claims are not identical, but at least one examined application claim is not patentably distinct from the reference claim(s) because the examined application claim is either anticipated by, or would have been obvious over, the reference claim(s). See, e.g., In re Berg, 140 F.3d 1428, 46 USPQ2d 1226 (Fed. Cir. 1998); In re Goodman, 11 F.3d 1046, 29 USPQ2d 2010 (Fed. Cir. 1993); In re Longi, 759 F.2d 887, 225 USPQ 645 (Fed. Cir. 1985); In re Van Ornum, 686 F.2d 937, 214 USPQ 761 (CCPA 1982); In re Vogel, 422 F.2d 438, 164 USPQ 619 (CCPA 1970); In re Thorington, 418 F.2d 528, 163 USPQ 644 (CCPA 1969).
A timely filed terminal disclaimer in compliance with 37 CFR 1.321(c) or 1.321(d) may be used to overcome an actual or provisional rejection based on nonstatutory double patenting provided the reference application or patent either is shown to be commonly owned with the examined application, or claims an invention made as a result of activities undertaken within the scope of a joint research agreement. See MPEP § 717.02 for applications subject to examination under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA as explained in MPEP § 2159. See MPEP §§ 706.02(l)(1) - 706.02(l)(3) for applications not subject to examination under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA . A terminal disclaimer must be signed in compliance with 37 CFR 1.321(b).
The USPTO Internet website contains terminal disclaimer forms which may be used. Please visit www.uspto.gov/patent/patents-forms. The filing date of the application in which the form is filed determines what form (e.g., PTO/SB/25, PTO/SB/26, PTO/AIA /25, or PTO/AIA /26) should be used. A web-based eTerminal Disclaimer may be filled out completely online using web-screens. An eTerminal Disclaimer that meets all requirements is auto-processed and approved immediately upon submission. For more information about eTerminal Disclaimers, refer to www.uspto.gov/patents/process/file/efs/guidance/eTD-info-I.jsp.
Claims 1-20 are provisionally rejected on the ground of nonstatutory double patenting as being unpatentable over claims 1-20 of co-pending application no. 18/195,064 in view of Dirla (US Pub 2009/0271725 A1) and Rahmat Ullah, Naveed Ahmad, Saif U.R. Malik, Saeed Akbar, Adeel Anjum, (Simulator for modeling, analysis, and visualizations of thermal status in data centers, Sustainable Computing: Informatics and Systems, Volume 19, 2018, Pages 324-340, ISSN 2210-5379, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.suscom.2017.12.005.).
Application No. 18223229
Co-pending No. 18195064
1. A computer-implemented method comprising: receiving a request for datacenter visualization, wherein the request is associated with a plurality of datacenter computing components of a physical datacenter installation prior to deployment of the plurality of datacenter computing components of the physical datacenter installation; determining one or more installation characteristics associated with the physical datacenter installation; determining one or more performance parameters associated with the physical datacenter installation based at least in part on the one or more installation characteristics; and generating the datacenter visualization for presentation to a user associated with the request, wherein the datacenter visualization is a digital representation of the physical datacenter installation that further includes a visual representation of the performance parameters associated with the plurality of datacenter computing components.
1. A computer-implemented method comprising: receiving a request for asset visualization, wherein the request is associated with a plurality of distributed datacenter computing components associated with disparate physical datacenter installations; determining location data for the distributed datacenter computing components, wherein the location data comprises intended location data for at least one of the distributed computing components; and generating the asset visualization for presentation to a user associated with the request, wherein the asset visualization is a digital representation of the disparate physical datacenter installations including; a visual representation of a presence of at least a portion of the distributed datacenter computing components associated with each disparate physical datacenter installation; and a visual representation of an absence for the at least one of the distributed datacenter computing components associated with the intended location data.
8. The computer-implemented method according to claim 1, further comprising:
determining one or more performance parameters associated with the distributed datacenter computing components; and
modifying the asset visualization based upon the one or more performance parameters.
8. A system comprising: a non-transitory storage device; and a processor coupled to the non-transitory storage device, wherein the processor is configured to: receive a request for datacenter visualization, wherein the request is associated with a plurality of datacenter computing components of a physical datacenter installation prior to deployment of the plurality of datacenter computing components of the physical datacenter installation; determine one or more installation characteristics associated with the physical datacenter installation; determine one or more performance parameters associated with the physical datacenter installation based at least in part on the one or more installation characteristics; and generate the datacenter visualization for presentation to a user associated with the request, wherein the datacenter visualization is a digital representation of the physical datacenter installation that further includes a visual representation of the performance parameters associated with the plurality of datacenter computing components.
9. A system comprising: a non-transitory storage device; and a processor coupled to the non-transitory storage device, wherein the processor is configured to: receive a request for asset visualization, wherein the request is associated with a plurality of distributed datacenter computing components associated with disparate physical datacenter installations; determine location data for the distributed datacenter computing components, wherein the location data comprises intended location data for at least one of the distributed computing components; and generate the asset visualization for presentation to a user associated with the request, wherein the asset visualization is a digital representation of the disparate physical datacenter installations including; a visual representation of a presence of at least a portion of the distributed datacenter computing components associated with each disparate physical datacenter installation; and a visual representation of an absence for the at least one of the distributed datacenter computing components associated with the intended location data.16. The system according to claim 9, wherein the processor is further configured to:
determine one or more performance parameters associated with the distributed datacenter computing components; and
modify the asset visualization based upon the one or more performance parameters.
15. A computer program product comprising at least one non-transitory computer-readable storage medium having computer program code thereon that, in execution with at least one processor, configures the computer program product for: receiving a request for datacenter visualization, wherein the request is associated with a plurality of datacenter computing components of a physical datacenter installation prior to deployment of the plurality of datacenter computing components of the physical datacenter installation; determining one or more installation characteristics associated with the physical datacenter installation; determining one or more performance parameters associated with the physical datacenter installation based at least in part on the one or more installation characteristics; and generating the datacenter visualization for presentation to a user associated with the request, wherein the datacenter visualization is a digital representation of the physical datacenter installation that further includes a visual representation of the performance parameters associated with the plurality of datacenter computing components.
17. A computer program product comprising at least one non-transitory computer-readable storage medium having computer program code thereon that, in execution with at least one processor, configures the computer program product for: receiving a request for asset visualization, wherein the request is associated with a plurality of distributed datacenter computing components associated with disparate physical datacenter installations; determining location data for the distributed datacenter computing components, wherein the location data comprises intended location data for at least one of the distributed computing components; and generating the asset visualization for presentation to a user associated with the request, wherein the asset visualization is a digital representation of the disparate physical datacenter installations including; a visual representation of a presence of at least a portion of the distributed datacenter computing components associated with each disparate physical datacenter installation; and a visual representation of an absence for the at least one of the distributed datacenter computing components associated with the intended location data.
20. The computer program product according to claim 17, further configured for:
determining one or more performance parameters associated with the distributed datacenter computing components; and
modifying the asset visualization based upon the one or more performance parameters.
The claims of US application 18195064 does not disclose “prior to deployment of the plurality of datacenter computing components of the physical datacenter installation.”, “defining at least a number of datacenter computing components for the physical datacenter installation and a relative position of the datacenter computing components within the physical datacenter installation” and “generating a modification recommendation for the installation characteristics associated with the physical datacenter installation.”.
Dirla teaches prior to deployment of the plurality of datacenter computing components of the physical datacenter installation (Dirla, ¶0005, “As decisions are made as to where to ad[d] additional servers, capacity planning for adding additional servers, and/or moving servers can become complex and cumbersome” ¶0009, “implementing capacity and facility planning and monitoring” ¶0034, “An enterprise can predict alarms/excessive power dissipation conditions and make it possible for an enterprise to make decisions concerning load balance and upgrades to their systems based on power dissipation in a centralized fashion from any of a plurality of distributed terminals.” ¶0035, “simplify capacity planning and accelerate the speed of high-density server deployment. The system is capable of tracking and recording additions, movements, and deletions in branch circuits. The system can track load vs. available AC power and cabinet capacities within a data center. The system can depict graphically dynamic power variations at the circuit, cabinet, room, and facility level, and can provide automated alarms in real time.”).
US application 18195064 and Dirla are considered to be analogous art because all pertain to datacenter monitoring. It would have been obvious before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified US application 18195064 with the features of “prior to deployment of the plurality of datacenter computing components of the physical datacenter installation.” as taught by Dirla. The suggestion/motivation would have been for rack management and capacity planning for distributed electrical systems such as high-density server installations (Dirla, ¶0002).
Ullah teaches prior to deployment of the plurality of datacenter computing components of the physical datacenter installation (Page 338, “we developed a visual simulator that enables DC user/administrator to define DC architecture, analyze and visualize the thermal status under different configurations and solutions.” “our focus on designing an energy efficient DC before its implementation in a real environment.”).
Ullah discloses defining at least a number of datacenter computing components for the physical datacenter installation and a relative position of the datacenter computing components within the physical datacenter installation (Ullah, Fig. 5, Fig. 11, Fig. 12, Page 322, “we modeled components comprises physical layer.” “We keep racks in rows at a pitch of around two meters according to DC layout standards. The user will have to enter the number of racks and number of servers per rack. The simulator automatically organizes into rows according to the specified dimensions as shown in Fig. 5.” Page 336, “A single server can be selected and moved to the desired rack as shown in Fig. 12. Servers with high temperature can be moved to low-temperature region to maintain thermal balance. After relocation of a single server or a group of servers, intra rack cross coefficients matrix and inter racks cross coefficient matrix are recalculated automatically.” Server relocation indicates a relative position of the server.); and
generating a modification recommendation for the installation characteristics associated with the physical datacenter installation (Ullah, Page 336, “To model this our simulator allows users to choose servers with high temperature and move to lower temperature regions.” “This module helps users to foresee the temperature distribution of different configuration and arrangement of servers and racks as well as CRAC units.”. Page 337, “These techniques are chosen to predict hotspots as they yield predictions with reasonable accuracy and are computationally not that intensive” Page 339, “The simulator demonstrates entire temperature space in 3D to show the area with most heat and allow the user to pinpoint the contribution of each node in hotspots formation. This will allow the administrator to take several other precautionary steps such as modifying the workload on a server developing hotspots more frequently or for a longer period of time, devising task migration strategies or relocating high processing server racks near CRAC units.” The area with most heat can be a modification recommendation.).
US application 18195064 and Ullah are considered to be analogous art because all pertain to datacenter monitoring. It would have been obvious before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified US application 18195064 with the features of “prior to deployment of the plurality of datacenter computing components of the physical datacenter installation.”, “defining at least a number of datacenter computing components for the physical datacenter installation and a relative position of the datacenter computing components within the physical datacenter installation” and “generating a modification recommendation for the installation characteristics associated with the physical datacenter installation.”. as taught by Ullah. The suggestion/motivation would have been in order to analyze the impact of server’s relocation from one rack to another (Ullah, Page 336) and Simulator speeds up the development process of theoretical research by allowing repeatable experiments in a controllable environment (Ullah, Page 338).
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 of this title, 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 set forth in Graham v. John Deere Co., 383 U.S. 1, 148 USPQ 459 (1966), that are applied 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.
Claims 1-2, 8-9, 15-16 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Nevalainen, S. (2018). (A Comparative Study of Monitoring Data Center Temperature Through Visualizations in Virtual Reality Versus 2D Screen (Dissertation). Retrieved from https://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:kth:diva-233132) in view of Dirla (US Pub 2009/0271725 A1) and Rahmat Ullah, Naveed Ahmad, Saif U.R. Malik, Saeed Akbar, Adeel Anjum, (Simulator for modeling, analysis, and visualizations of thermal status in data centers, Sustainable Computing: Informatics and Systems, Volume 19, 2018, Pages 324-340, ISSN 2210-5379, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.suscom.2017.12.005.).
As to claim 1, Nevalainen discloses a computer-implemented method comprising:
receiving a request for datacenter visualization, wherein the request is associated with a plurality of datacenter computing components of a physical datacenter installation (Page 7-8, “the data center industry has become interested in more immersive visualization alternatives. For example, Nokia has experimented with augmented reality with their Multi-purpose Intuitive Knowledge Assistant (MIKA), which utilizes augmented reality to guide telco engineers and network operation center staff more efficiently”)
prior to deployment of the plurality of datacenter computing components of the physical datacenter installation (Page 22, “Imaginary data center visualizations could also be used to train data center managers to handle different scenarios that would be difficult and expensive to simulate in a real data center.” “Imaginary data for training” is prior to deployment because it is not real scenarios.);
determining one or more installation characteristics associated with the physical datacenter installation (Page 22, “Nokia’s AR experiments with MIKA have indicated positive results for on-site data center management, but data centers can also be located in distant or challenging locations that cannot be accessed easily, and for these use cases VR offers a potential solution.” Page 25, “In terms of optimization and safety, knowing the physical location of devices is essential in relocating overheating devices to increase system performance and act fast in emergency situations.”);
determining one or more performance parameters associated with the physical datacenter installation based at least in part on the one or more installation characteristics (Page 8, “MIKA is designed especially for telco tasks and can help, for example, data center technicians to find relevant information from racks. The system uses the Microsoft HoloLens head-mounted display (HMD) and superimposes information related to racks on top of the racks in the data center (fig. 5). The system also guides how certain actions can be performed for data center devices. The user interacts with the assistant by talking, leaving the hands free for physical work. The assistant has also the potential for temperature visualization, by coloring devices based on their temperatures and showing diagrams of temperature changes on top of the devices. MIKA has lots of potential to improve navigation and working with devices inside data centers”); and
generating the datacenter visualization for presentation to a user associated with the request, wherein the datacenter visualization is a digital representation of the physical datacenter installation that further includes a visual representation of the performance parameters associated with the plurality of datacenter computing components (Fig. 4, Fig. 5, Page 27, “The visual mapping for implemented user interfaces was designed to support hierarchical, spatial, and temporal data structures of temperature data.” “In addition to the temporal data structure, temperature data is also strongly connected to the physical spatial location in the data center, which gives essential information for data center managers to locate the devices efficiently. For this reason, spatial location and dimensions were mapped to the visual representation by using the rack coordinates and device u-locations. To present the hierarchy of data, the details of rack devices were shown by selecting the rack first, as this supported the mental model that users had when selecting a device in a real data center.” Page 28, “Both 2D and VR visualizations contained four dynamic parts that created the main user interface components. These components were day selection, floor plan, rack front view, and device details view. Hierarchical "details on demand" design opens a new component when the user selects a rack or a device. With these components, the user can perform the main tasks, including searching for specific rack or device data at a specific time and finding hottest or coldest temperatures in the data center room or rack. These tasks were selected based on PACT analysis and discussions with data center specialists. In reality, the variety of data center manager tasks are very versatile, including also other than temperature related tasks, and therefore the main tasks for the study were selected early in the design process. The final tasks in user testing included searching for specific devices and racks and reading their temperature as well as the finding hottest or coldest devices and racks from a data center room based on visualizations.” Page 42-43).
Examiner believe the “Imaginary data center visualizations” in Nevalainen discloses the claim term “prior to deployment of the plurality of datacenter computing components of the physical datacenter installation”.
Assuming, arguendo, that Nevalainen does not discloses prior to deployment of the plurality of datacenter computing components of the physical datacenter installation.
Dirla also teaches prior to deployment of the plurality of datacenter computing components of the physical datacenter installation (Dirla, ¶0005, “As decisions are made as to where to ad[d] additional servers, capacity planning for adding additional servers, and/or moving servers can become complex and cumbersome” ¶0009, “implementing capacity and facility planning and monitoring” ¶0034, “An enterprise can predict alarms/excessive power dissipation conditions and make it possible for an enterprise to make decisions concerning load balance and upgrades to their systems based on power dissipation in a centralized fashion from any of a plurality of distributed terminals.” ¶0035, “simplify capacity planning and accelerate the speed of high-density server deployment. The system is capable of tracking and recording additions, movements, and deletions in branch circuits. The system can track load vs. available AC power and cabinet capacities within a data center. The system can depict graphically dynamic power variations at the circuit, cabinet, room, and facility level, and can provide automated alarms in real time.”).
Nevalainen and Dirla are considered to be analogous art because all pertain to datacenter monitoring. It would have been obvious before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified Nevalainen with the features of “prior to deployment of the plurality of datacenter computing components of the physical datacenter installation.” as taught by Dirla. The suggestion/motivation would have been for rack management and capacity planning for distributed electrical systems such as high-density server installations (Dirla, ¶0002).
Nevalainen does not explicitly disclose defining at least a number of datacenter computing components for the physical datacenter installation and a relative position of the datacenter computing components within the physical datacenter installation; and generating a modification recommendation for the installation characteristics associated with the physical datacenter installation.
Ullah discloses defining at least a number of datacenter computing components for the physical datacenter installation and a relative position of the datacenter computing components within the physical datacenter installation (Ullah, Fig. 5, Fig. 11, Fig. 12, Page 322, “we modeled components comprises physical layer.” “We keep racks in rows at a pitch of around two meters according to DC layout standards. The user will have to enter the number of racks and number of servers per rack. The simulator automatically organizes into rows according to the specified dimensions as shown in Fig. 5.” Page 336, “A single server can be selected and moved to the desired rack as shown in Fig. 12. Servers with high temperature can be moved to low-temperature region to maintain thermal balance. After relocation of a single server or a group of servers, intra rack cross coefficients matrix and inter racks cross coefficient matrix are recalculated automatically.” Server relocation indicates a relative position of the server.); and
generating a modification recommendation for the installation characteristics associated with the physical datacenter installation (Ullah, Page 336, “To model this our simulator allows users to choose servers with high temperature and move to lower temperature regions.” “This module helps users to foresee the temperature distribution of different configuration and arrangement of servers and racks as well as CRAC units.”. Page 337, “These techniques are chosen to predict hotspots as they yield predictions with reasonable accuracy and are computationally not that intensive” Page 339, “The simulator demonstrates entire temperature space in 3D to show the area with most heat and allow the user to pinpoint the contribution of each node in hotspots formation. This will allow the administrator to take several other precautionary steps such as modifying the workload on a server developing hotspots more frequently or for a longer period of time, devising task migration strategies or relocating high processing server racks near CRAC units.” The area with most heat can be a modification recommendation.).
Nevalainen and Ullah are considered to be analogous art because all pertain to datacenter monitoring. It would have been obvious before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified Nevalainen with the features of “defining at least a number of datacenter computing components for the physical datacenter installation and a relative position of the datacenter computing components within the physical datacenter installation; and generating a modification recommendation for the installation characteristics associated with the physical datacenter installation.” as taught by Ullah. The suggestion/motivation would have been in order to analyze the impact of server’s relocation from one rack to another (Ullah, Page 336).
As to claim 2, claim 1 is incorporated and the combination of Nevalainen, Dirla and Ullah discloses rendering the datacenter visualization in a virtual reality (VR) environment (Nevalainen, Page 28, “For VR and 3D modeling, diferent alternatives were explored including Unity3D, WebVR and A-Frame. A new VR development paradigm on the web using WebVR Javascript API seemed promising for cloud-based software, as the integration to the web-based application could be done automatically and all virtual environments from desktop VR to magic window and headsets would be supported easily” Fig. 22. Fig.24.).
or rendering the datacenter visualization as an augmented reality (AR) overlay via a user device associated with the user (Page 8, “Nokia has experimented with augmented reality with their Multi-purpose Intuitive Knowledge Assistant (MIKA), which utilizes augmented reality to guide telco engineers and network operation center staff more efficiently (Nokia 2016, 2017). In augmented reality (AR), computer produced content is superimposed into the real world (Caudell & Mizell 1992). MIKA is designed especially for telco tasks and can help, for example, data center technicians to find relevant information from racks. The system uses the Microsoft HoloLens head-mounted display (HMD) and superimposes information related to racks on top of the racks in the data center (fig. 5). The system also guides how certain actions can be performed for data center devices. The user interacts with the assistant by talking, leaving the hands free for physical work. The assistant has also the potential for temperature visualization, by coloring devices based on their temperatures and showing diagrams of temperature changes on top of the devices.”).
As to claim 8, the combination of Nevalainen, Dirla and Ullah discloses a system comprising: a non-transitory storage device; and a processor coupled to the non-transitory storage device, wherein the processor is configured to: receive a request for datacenter visualization, wherein the request is associated with a plurality of datacenter computing components of a physical datacenter installation prior to deployment of the plurality of datacenter computing components of the physical datacenter installation; determine one or more installation characteristics associated with the physical datacenter installation defining at least a number of datacenter computing components for the physical datacenter installation and a relative position of the datacenter computing components within the physical datacenter installation; determine one or more performance parameters associated with the physical datacenter installation based at least in part on the one or more installation characteristics; generate the datacenter visualization for presentation to a user associated with the request, wherein the datacenter visualization is a digital representation of the physical datacenter installation that further includes a visual representation of the performance parameters associated with the plurality of datacenter computing components; and generate a modification recommendation for the installation characteristics associated with the physical datacenter installation (See claim 1 for detailed analysis.).
As to claim 9, claim 8 is incorporated and the combination of Nevalainen, Dirla and Ullah discloses the processor is further configured to render the datacenter visualization in a virtual reality (VR) environment; or render the datacenter visualization as an augmented reality (AR) overlay via a user device associated with the user (See claim 2 for detailed analysis.).
As to claim 15, the combination of Nevalainen, Dirla and Ullah discloses a computer program product comprising at least one non-transitory computer-readable storage medium having computer program code thereon that, in execution with at least one processor, configures the computer program product for: receiving a request for datacenter visualization, wherein the request is associated with a plurality of datacenter computing components of a physical datacenter installation prior to deployment of the plurality of datacenter computing components of the physical datacenter installation; determining one or more installation characteristics associated with the physical datacenter installation defining at least a number of datacenter computing components for the physical datacenter installation and a relative position of the datacenter computing components within the physical datacenter installation; determining one or more performance parameters associated with the physical datacenter installation based at least in part on the one or more installation characteristics; generating the datacenter visualization for presentation to a user associated with the request, wherein the datacenter visualization is a digital representation of the physical datacenter installation that further includes a visual representation of the performance parameters associated with the plurality of datacenter computing components; and generating a modification recommendation for the installation characteristics associated with the physical datacenter installation. (See claim 1 for detailed analysis.).
As to claim 16, claim 15 is incorporated and the combination of Nevalainen, Dirla and Ullah discloses rendering the datacenter visualization in a virtual reality (VR) environment and/or rendering the datacenter visualization as an augmented reality (AR) overlay via a user device associated with the user (See claim 2-3 for detailed analysis.).
Claims 4-7, 11-14, 17-21, 25 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Nevalainen, S. (2018). (A Comparative Study of Monitoring Data Center Temperature Through Visualizations in Virtual Reality Versus 2D Screen (Dissertation). Retrieved from https://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:kth:diva-233132) in view of Dirla (US Pub 2009/0271725 A1) and Rahmat Ullah, Naveed Ahmad, Saif U.R. Malik, Saeed Akbar, Adeel Anjum, (Simulator for modeling, analysis, and visualizations of thermal status in data centers, Sustainable Computing: Informatics and Systems, Volume 19, 2018, Pages 324-340, ISSN 2210-5379, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.suscom.2017.12.005.).
As to claim 4, claim 1 is incorporated and Nevalainen does not explicitly disclose generating the datacenter visualization further comprises: accessing one or more initial installation arrangements; and modifying the one or more initial installation arrangements based upon the one or more installation characteristics associated with the physical datacenter installation.
Ullah teaches accessing one or more initial installation arrangements and modifying the one or more initial installation arrangements based upon the one or more installation characteristics associated with the physical datacenter installation (Ullah, Page 336, “The simulator allows users can choose a rack with high temperature (shown by red). It displays all the servers along with their updated current temperature. A single server can be selected and moved to the desired rack as shown in Fig. 12. Servers with high temperature can be moved to low-temperature region to maintain thermal balance.” The location is the installation characteristics.).
Nevalainen and Ullah are considered to be analogous art because all pertain to datacenter monitoring. It would have been obvious before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified Nevalainen with the features of “accessing one or more initial installation arrangements and modifying the one or more initial installation arrangements based upon the one or more installation characteristics associated with the physical datacenter installation” as taught by Ullah. The suggestion/motivation would have been in order to analyze the impact of server’s relocation from one rack to another (Ullah, Page 336).
As to claim 5, claim 1 is incorporated and Nevalainen does not explicitly disclose receiving one or more modifications to the installation characteristics; and dynamically modifying the datacenter visualization based upon the one or more modifications.
Ullah teaches receiving one or more modifications to the installation characteristics; and dynamically modifying the datacenter visualization based upon the one or more modifications (Ullah, Fig. 12, Page 336, “The simulator allows users can choose a rack with high temperature (shown by red). It displays all the servers along with their updated current temperature. A single server can be selected and moved to the desired rack as shown in Fig. 12. Servers with high temperature can be moved to low-temperature region to maintain thermal balance. After relocation of a single server or a group of servers, intra rack cross coefficients matrix and inter racks cross coefficient matrix are recalculated automatically. This module helps users to foresee the temperature distribution of different configuration and arrangement of servers and racks as well as CRAC units.” Page 338, “we developed a visual simulator that enables DC user/administrator to define DC architecture, analyze and visualize the thermal status under different configurations and solutions. The simulator allows fine-grained thermal analysis of individual servers as a result of which broader regions of high temperatures can be detected and shown. To analyze the thermal balance inside DC, servers/racks and CRAC units can be relocated. The user will also able to predict thermal condition after a specific time period.” “To understand the thermal condition, visualization of temperature distribution is considered an effective method.”).
Nevalainen and Ullah are considered to be analogous art because all pertain to datacenter monitoring. It would have been obvious before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified Nevalainen with the features of “receiving one or more modifications to the installation characteristics; and dynamically modifying the datacenter visualization based upon the one or more modifications” as taught by Ullah. The suggestion/motivation would have been in order to analyze the impact of server’s relocation from one rack to another (Ullah, Page 336).
As to claim 6, claim 1 is incorporated and Nevalainen does not explicitly disclose dynamically determining the one or more performance parameters associated with the physical datacenter installation in response to the one or more modifications to the installation characteristics.
Ullah teaches dynamically determining the one or more performance parameters associated with the physical datacenter installation in response to the one or more modifications to the installation characteristics (Ullah, Page 336, “The simulator allows users can choose a rack with high temperature (shown by red). It displays all the servers along with their updated current temperature. A single server can be selected and moved to the desired rack as shown in Fig. 12. Servers with high temperature can be moved to low-temperature region to maintain thermal balance. After relocation of a single server or a group of servers, intra rack cross coefficients matrix and inter racks cross coefficient matrix are recalculated automatically. This module helps users to foresee the temperature distribution of different configuration and arrangement of servers and racks as well as CRAC units.”).
Nevalainen and Ullah are considered to be analogous art because all pertain to datacenter monitoring. It would have been obvious before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified Nevalainen with the features of “determining the one or more performance parameters associated with the physical datacenter installation in response to the one or more modifications to the installation characteristics” as taught by Ullah. The suggestion/motivation would have been in order to analyze the impact of server’s relocation from one rack to another (Ullah, Page 336).
As to claim 7, claim 5 is incorporated and the combination of Nevalainen and Ullah discloses wherein the one or more modifications to the installation characteristics are received via a user input directly within a virtual reality (VR) environment or an augmented reality (AR) overlay rendering the datacenter visualization (Ullah, Page 336, “The simulator allows users can choose a rack with high temperature (shown by red). It displays all the servers along with their updated current temperature. A single server can be selected and moved to the desired rack as shown in Fig. 12. Servers with high temperature can be moved to low-temperature region to maintain thermal balance. After relocation of a single server or a group of servers, intra rack cross coefficients matrix and inter racks cross coefficient matrix are recalculated automatically. This module helps users to foresee the temperature distribution of different configuration and arrangement of servers and racks as well as CRAC units.”).
As to claim 11, claim 8 is incorporated and the combination of Nevalainen and Ullah discloses in generating the datacenter visualization, the processor is further configured to: access one or more initial installation arrangements; and modify the one or more initial installation arrangements based upon the one or more installation characteristics associated with the physical datacenter installation (See claim 4 for detailed analysis.).
As to claim 12, claim 8 is incorporated and the combination of Nevalainen and Ullah discloses the processor is further configured to:receive one or more modifications to the installation characteristics; and dynamically modify the datacenter visualization based upon the one or more modifications (See claim 5 for detailed analysis.).
As to claim 13, claim 12 is incorporated and the combination of Nevalainen and Ullah discloses the processor is further configured to:dynamically determine the one or more performance parameters associated with the physical datacenter installation in response to the one or more modifications to the installation characteristics (See claim 6 for detailed analysis.).
As to claim 14, claim 12 is incorporated and the combination of Nevalainen and Ullah discloses the one or more modifications to the installation characteristics are received via a user input directly within a virtual reality (VR) environment or an augmented reality (AR) overlay rendering the datacenter visualization (See claim 7 for detailed analysis.).
As to claim 17, claim 5 is incorporated and the combination of Nevalainen and Ullah discloses in generating the datacenter visualization, the computer program product is further configured for:accessing one or more initial installation arrangements; and modifying the one or more initial installation arrangements based upon the one or more installation characteristics associated with the physical datacenter installation (See claim 4 for detailed analysis.).
As to claim 18, claim 15 is incorporated and the combination of Nevalainen and Ullah discloses receiving one or more modifications to the installation characteristics; and dynamically modifying the datacenter visualization based upon the one or more modifications (See claim 5 for detailed analysis.).
As to claim 19, claim 18 is incorporated and the combination of Nevalainen and Ullah discloses dynamically determining the one or more performance parameters associated with the physical datacenter installation in response to the one or more modifications to the installation characteristics (See claim 6 for detailed analysis.).
As to claim 20, claim 18 is incorporated and the combination of Nevalainen and Ullah discloses wherein the one or more modifications to the installation characteristics are received via a user input directly within a virtual reality (VR) environment or an augmented reality (AR) overlay rendering the datacenter visualization (See claim 7 for detailed analysis.).
As to claim 21, claim 1 is incorporated and Nevalainen does not disclose receiving one or more intended operations to be performed by the datacenter computing components associated with the physical datacenter installation; and modifying the one or more installation characteristics associated with the physical datacenter installation based on the intended operations so as to modify at least one of the number of datacenter computing components for the physical datacenter installation or the relative position of the datacenter computing components within the physical datacenter installation..
Ullah teaches receiving one or more intended operations to be performed by the datacenter computing components associated with the physical datacenter installation; and modifying the one or more installation characteristics associated with the physical datacenter installation based on the intended operations so as to modify at least one of the number of datacenter computing components for the physical datacenter installation or the relative position of the datacenter computing components within the physical datacenter installation (Ullah, Page 328, 3.2 simulator, “provide an accurate model for the design of energy efficient systems and heat management [40]. Understanding thermal phenomena and energy consumption inside a DC is a complex problem because temperature depends upon many factors including heat loads, layout of rooms, and performance of cooling units.” Page 329, 4.1 designing data center, “The simulator provides the user a dynamic environment where they can reorganize racks and CRAC Units. The output of this step is a blueprint with the placement of Racks and CRAC units according to the specified dimension of DC floor.” Page 336, “A single server can be selected and moved to the desired rack as shown in Fig. 12. Servers with high temperature can be moved to low-temperature region to maintain thermal balance. After relocation of a single server or a group of servers, intra rack cross coefficients matrix and inter racks cross coefficient matrix are recalculated automatically.”).
Nevalainen and Ullah are considered to be analogous art because all pertain to datacenter monitoring. It would have been obvious before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified Nevalainen with the features of “receiving one or more intended operations to be performed by the datacenter computing components associated with the physical datacenter installation; and modifying the one or more installation characteristics associated with the physical datacenter installation based on the intended operations. so as to modify at least one of the number of datacenter computing components for the physical datacenter installation or the relative position of the datacenter computing components within the physical datacenter installation” as taught by Ullah. The suggestion/motivation would have been in order to analyze the impact of server’s relocation from one rack to another (Ullah, Page 336) and Simulator speeds up the development process of theoretical research by allowing repeatable experiments in a controllable environment (Ullah, Page 338).
As to claim 25, claim 1 is incorporated and Nevalainen does not disclose determining a requisite performance for the physical datacenter installation; and modifying the one or more installation characteristics associated with the physical datacenter installation based on requisite performance so as to modify at least one of the number of datacenter computing components for the physical datacenter installation or the relative position of the datacenter computing components within the physical datacenter installation.
Ullah teaches determining a requisite performance for the physical datacenter installation (Ullah, Table 1. Techniques for data Center thermal status Visualizations. 4.1. Designing data center. 5.5. Servers relocation); and
modifying the one or more installation characteristics associated with the physical datacenter installation based on requisite performance so as to modify at least one of the number of datacenter computing components for the physical datacenter installation or the relative position of the datacenter computing components within the physical datacenter installation (Ullah, Page 336, “5.5. Servers relocation” “Identifying and comparing the thermal sensitivity to ambient effect for various servers helps in the thermal-aware arrangement and location switching of servers [62]. To model this our simulator allows users to choose servers with high temperature and move to lower temperature regions. It will help to maintain thermal balance and reduce the cooling load and chances of hotspots.”).
Nevalainen and Ullah are considered to be analogous art because all pertain to datacenter monitoring. It would have been obvious before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified Nevalainen with the features of “determining a requisite performance for the physical datacenter installation; and modifying the one or more installation characteristics associated with the physical datacenter installation based on requisite performance so as to modify at least one of the number of datacenter computing components for the physical datacenter installation or the relative position of the datacenter computing components within the physical datacenter installation” as taught by Ullah. The suggestion/motivation would have been in order to analyze the impact of server’s relocation from one rack to another (Ullah, Page 336) and Simulator speeds up the development process of theoretical research by allowing repeatable experiments in a controllable environment (Ullah, Page 338).
Claims 22 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Nevalainen, S. (2018). (A Comparative Study of Monitoring Data Center Temperature Through Visualizations in Virtual Reality Versus 2D Screen (Dissertation). Retrieved from https://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:kth:diva-233132) in view of Dirla (US Pub 2009/0271725 A1) and Rahmat Ullah, Naveed Ahmad, Saif U.R. Malik, Saeed Akbar, Adeel Anjum, (Simulator for modeling, analysis, and visualizations of thermal status in data centers, Sustainable Computing: Informatics and Systems, Volume 19, 2018, Pages 324-340, ISSN 2210-5379, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.suscom.2017.12.005.), and
Neglia, Giovanni, Matteo Sereno, and Giuseppe Bianchi. "Geographical load balancing across green datacenters: A mean field analysis." ACM SIGMETRICS Performance Evaluation Review 44.2 (2016): 64-69.
As to claim 22, claim 1 is incorporated and Nevalainen does not disclose receiving an indication of a geographic location at which the physical datacenter installation will be installed; and modifying the one or more installation characteristics associated with the physical datacenter installation based on the geographic location.
Dirla teaches receiving an indication of a geographic location at which the physical datacenter installation will be installed (Dirla, ¶0008, “a centrally located, user-friendly system for capacity and facility planning as well as tracking or monitoring of electrical characteristics of equipment located at one or more sites distributed at multiple geographic locations.” Fig. 4, ¶0049, “This brings the user to a locations screen 46 (FIG. 6), from which the user can select one of the address locations 48 of a facility.”);
Neglia teaches modifying the one or more installation characteristics associated with the physical datacenter installation based on the geographic location (Neglia, abstract, ““Geographic Load Balancing” is a strategy for reducing the energy cost of data centers spreading across different terrestrial locations.” Page 65, “geographical load balancing is driven by time-varying energy prices, that can be due to a significant local production from renewable sources.”).
Nevalainen and Neglia are considered to be analogous art because all pertain to datacenter monitoring. It would have been obvious before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified Nevalainen with the features of “modifying the one or more installation characteristics associated with the physical datacenter installation based on the geographic location” as taught by Neglia. The suggestion/motivation would have been in order to making a considerable effort to offer efficient, scalable, and
reliable services (Neglia, Page 64.).
Allowable Subject Matter
Claim 24 is objected to as being dependent upon a rejected base claim, but would be allowable if rewritten in independent form including all of the limitations of the base claim and any intervening claims.
24. (Currently Amended The computer-implemented method according to Claim 1, further comprising: determining geometric constraints for the physical datacenter installation based on the one or more installation characteristics defining at least a distance between racks supporting the data center computing components; and determining that at least one datacenter computing component is inapplicable to the physical datacenter installation in an instance in which the at least one datacenter computing component fails to comply with the geometric constraints.
Conclusion
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/YU CHEN/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2613
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