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 .
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 .
Claims 1, 3, 5, 10, 11, 12, and 16-20 are currently amended. Claims 6, 7, 13, and 19 have been canceled. No new claims have been added. Claims 1-5, 8-12, 14-18, and 20 are currently pending for examination.
Response to Arguments
As per applicant’s arguments, pgs.6-7, that Mahacek does not disclose the amended limitations of claims 1, 10, and 16 – which were moved up from claims 6-7, 13, and 19 – the examiner has carefully considered these arguments and respectfully disagrees. In response to the applicant’s argument that Mahacek does not disclose “a first tenet required by an application”, the applicant is directed towards Mahacek ; [col.3, lines 35-38]: “For example, workloads may require storage and network capabilities from a CSP and may be executed across one or more CSPs using different resources available” and col.3, lines 45-50: “Within each CSP, multiple compute devices or nodes may run workloads. In some embodiments, workloads are organized into containers for execution. The term container, as used herein, may refer to an application footprint that includes the application and the required library dependencies to run.”. The required network capabilities of the workload running the application equate to a first tenet required by an application.
In response to the applicant’s arguments that Mahacek does not disclose workload placement by “comparing the third site reliability engineering maturity assessment with, respectively, the site reliability engineering maturity assessments for the first and second hybrid cloud components” and “selecting the first or second hybrid cloud component based on alignment… with the first tenet” the applicant is directed towards Mahacek, [col.4, lines 43-66]: “The multi-cloud service system 130 may evaluate cloud-to-cloud latencies and save the results in a database. Based on the evaluation results, multi-cloud service system 130 may identify a group of CSP cloud regions and create a multi-cloud region based on a threshold of latency… Finally, with an established pod-to-pod communication through VXLAN and VPN across multi-cloud regions, multi-cloud service system 130 may inject a set of user data into each node to begin operations.”. Evaluating the cloud-to-cloud latencies in an environment comprising a plurality of CSPs necessarily requires comparing a third region-to-region latency, equating to a third site reliability maturity assessment, with a first and second cloud component reliability maturity assessment. The site or region-to-region pair with the lowest latency equates to a selected first or second hybrid cloud component which is most aligned with the first tenet.
In response to the applicant’s arguments that the amended claim language reflects qualitative adherence to a site reliability engineering principle rather than a numerical comparison, the examiner respectfully disagrees. Under B.R.I., the “first tenet” is interpreted as any specific performance metric relating to reliability of a site. It is not claimed that the comparison is being done between qualitative assessments rather than quantitative, or numerical, assessments. As such, the rejection of the instant application under 35 USC 103 is maintained- and the above mentioned limitations remain rejected by Mahacek.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 103 which forms the basis for all obviousness rejections set forth in this Office action:
A patent for a claimed invention may not be obtained, notwithstanding that the claimed invention is not identically disclosed as set forth in section 102, if the differences between the claimed invention and the prior art are such that the claimed invention as a whole would have been obvious before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to a person having ordinary skill in the art to which the claimed invention pertains. Patentability shall not be negated by the manner in which the invention was made.
Claims 1-4, 8, 10-11, 14, 16-17, and 20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Roddom (US 20230353464 A1) in view of Turi (US 20230155911 A1) in further view of Mahacek (US 11595306 B2) in further view of Venugopal (US 20210109830 A1).
As per claim 1, Roddom discloses:
A computer-implemented method comprising: defining, by a site reliability engineering maturity engine, a plurality of tenets, each tenet in the plurality of tenets representing a principle of site reliability engineering, a first tenet required by an application (“Service level objectives (SLOs), service level indicators (SLIs), and service level agreements (SLAs) may be primary metrics of site reliability engineering (SRE).". 0030 ; " In accordance with aspects, SLI engine 120 may define service level indicators for objectives such as latency, throughput, availability, capacity, etc.", 0045 ; “A service level agreement may be defined to provide a user with a clear picture of an application, service, or platform's level of functionality, reliability, and/or performance.”, ; “Exemplary service level objectives include availability, latency, service desk response time, incident resolution time, etc.", 0031 ; "Exemplary service level indicators include data latency, network traffic, error rate, saturation, etc.", 0032 ; “The system of the invention or portions of the system of the invention may be in the form of a “processing machine” a “computing device,” an “electronic device,” a “mobile device,” etc. These may be a computer, a computer server, a host machine, etc.”, 0060 ; Examiner Note: SLIs, SLOs, and SLAs equate to tenets of SRE maturity.)
Roddom may disclose the above limitation of claim 1, but does not explicitly disclose generating a first, second, and third SRE assessment.
However, Turi discloses:
generating, by the site reliability engineering maturity engine for the plurality of tenets, a first site reliability engineering maturity assessment for a first hybrid cloud component, a second site reliability engineering maturity assessment for a second hybrid cloud component, and a third site reliability engineering maturity assessment for an application (“This disclosure describes, at least in part, techniques for providing information associated with services. For instance, system(s) may determine health scores and one or more topologies associated with services”, 0029 ; "This disclosure further describes, at least in part, a method that includes determining a first health score associated with a first service and a second health score associated with a second service", 0024 ; ."In some examples, in addition to, or alternatively from, the user determining the priorities, the system(s) may also determine the priorities for the services using the health scores and the business values. For a first example, the system(s) may determine the priorities based on the health scores, where the system(s) determine that a first service with a lowest health score is prioritized first, followed by a second service with the second lowest health score, followed by a third service with the third lowest health score, and/or so forth.", 0033 ; “The user device(s) 104 and the resource(s) 108 may be communicatively coupled among one another and/or to various other devices via the cloud computing network 102 and/or the resource network(s) 106.”, 0051 ; see fig 1. ; Examiner Note: a health score equates to a site reliability engineering maturity assessment, and a third service equates to a third application.)
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art, before the effective filing date, to combine the teachings of Roddom and Turi in order to provide the SRE method of Roddom with the health score comparison method of Turi in order to prioritize the services in such a way that minimizes the loss that may occur from problems with the services (see Turi, [0033]).
Roddom in view of Turi discloses the above SRE method, but does not disclose determining workload placement based on an SRE assessment comparison.
However, Mahacek discloses:
determining, by the site reliability engineering maturity engine, a workload placement for the application by comparing the third site reliability engineering maturity assessments assessment with, respectively, the site reliability engineering maturity assessments for the first and second hybrid cloud components, and selecting the first or second hybrid cloud component based on alignment of a corresponding maturity assessment with the first tenet (“The multi-cloud service system 130 may evaluate cloud-to-cloud latencies and save the results in a database. Based on the evaluation results, multi-cloud service system 130 may identify a group of CSP cloud regions and create a multi-cloud region based on a threshold of latency… Finally, with an established pod-to-pod communication through VXLAN and VPN across multi-cloud regions, multi-cloud service system 130 may inject a set of user data into each node to begin operations.”, [col.4, lines 43-66] ; Examiner Note: Evaluating the cloud-to-cloud latencies in an environment comprising a plurality of CSPs necessarily requires comparing a third region-to-region latency, equating to a third site reliability maturity assessment, with a first and second cloud component reliability maturity assessment. The site or region-to-region pair with the lowest latency equates to a selected first or second hybrid cloud component which is most aligned with the first tenet.)
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art, before the effective filing date, to combine the teachings of Roddom in view of Turi with those of Mahacek in order to improve workload placement and ensure reliable transmission of packets from pod to pod (Mahacek, [0003]).
Roddom in view of Turi in further view of Mahacek discloses the above SRE method, but does not disclose migrating a workload based on an SRE assessment comparison.
However, Venugopal discloses:
initiating, by the site reliability engineering maturity engine, a workload migration of the application workload to the selected hybrid cloud component. ("The reliability score may be used to determine whether or not a remedial action associated with the operation of the node should be performed, such as migrating one or more task being performed by the particular node to another node or restarting the task(s) on another node. In such instances, the second node may be selected based on the similarly calculated reliability scores of other available nodes in the system (i.e., each node may operate in a similar manner such that each self-diagnoses by determining its own reliability score).", 0027)
The system of Roddom in view of Turi in further view of Mahacek in further view of Venugopal would determine workload placement based on a first, second, and third SRE assessment. It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art, before the effective filing date to combine the teachings of Roddom in view of Turi in further view of Mahacek with those of Venugopal in order to provide the SRE system with means for preventing node failure by taking remedial action based on calculated reliability scores (Venugopal, [0016-0017]).
As per claim 2, Roddom in view of Turi in further view of Mahacek in further view of Venugopal fully discloses the limitations of claim 1.
Furthermore, Roddom discloses:
the plurality of tenets includes at least one of scaling operations with load, capping operational load, overflow handling, service level agreements, operational readiness reviews, error budgeting, observability, end-user alerts handling, and blameless post-mortems ("Service level objectives (SLOs), service level indicators (SLIs), and service level agreements (SLAs) may be primary metrics of site reliability engineering (SRE).". 0030)
As per claim 3, Roddom in view of Turi in further view of Mahacek in further view of Venugopal fully discloses the limitations of claim 1.
Furthermore, Roddom discloses:
defining the plurality of tenets further comprises: defining a plurality of tenet dimensions associated with the plurality of tenets (“Exemplary service level objectives include availability, latency, service desk response time, incident resolution time, etc.”, 0031 ; " Exemplary service level indicators include data latency, network traffic, error rate, saturation, etc.", 0032)
As per claim 4, Roddom in view of Turi in further view of Mahacek in further view of Venugopal fully discloses the limitations of claim 3.
Furthermore, Roddom discloses:
the plurality of tenet dimensions includes at least one of security, high availability, disaster recovery, storage, networking, incident response, and deployment (“Exemplary service level objectives include availability, latency, service desk response time, incident resolution time, etc., 0031 ; " Exemplary service level indicators include data latency, network traffic, error rate, saturation, etc.", 0032)
As per claim 8, Roddom in view of Turi in further view of Mahacek in further view of Venugopal fully discloses the limitations of claim 1.
Furthermore, Turi discloses:
generating a report for at least one of the first, second, and third site reliability engineering maturity assessments. ("The electronic device is further configured to display the user interface using a display, the user interface including at least: a first health score associated with a first service; a first business value associated with the first service; a second health score associated with a second service; and a second business value associated with the second service", 0022)
As per claim 10, it is a computer program product claim (see Roddom, [0060]) comprising substantially the same limitations as claim 1, and as such, it is rejected for substantially the same reasons.
As per claim 11, it is a computer program product claim comprising substantially the same limitations as claim 3, and as such, it is rejected for substantially the same reasons.
As per claim 14, it is a computer program product claim comprising substantially the same limitations as claim 8, and as such, it is rejected for substantially the same reasons.
As per claim 16, it is a computer system claim (see Roddom, [0060]) comprising substantially the same limitations as claim 1, and as such, it is rejected for substantially the same reasons.
As per claim 17, it is a computer system claim comprising substantially the same limitations as claim 3, and as such, it is rejected for substantially the same reasons.
As per claim 20, it is a computer system claim comprising substantially the same limitations as claim 8, and as such, it is rejected for substantially the same reasons.
Claims 5, 12, and 18 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Roddom (US 20230353464 A1) in view of Turi (US 20230155911 A1) in further view of Mahacek (US 11595306 B2) in further view of Venugopal (US 20210109830 A1) in further view of Yadwadkar (US 9122739 B1).
As per claim 5, Roddom in view of Turi in further view of Mahacek in further view of Venugopal fully discloses the limitations of claim 3, but does not disclose assigning a weight for a tenet dimension of a plurality of tenet dimensions.
However, Yadwadkar discloses:
generating site reliability engineering maturity assessments includes: assigning a value for a tenet dimension in the plurality of tenet dimensions; and assigning a weight for the tenet dimension in the plurality of tenet dimensions ("The evaluation function 935 may also apply a set of cost weights (specified by the optimization goals 670) to the set of cost evaluation values and a set of SLO weights (specified by the SLO weights 930) to the set of SLO evaluation values to produce a final evaluation value for the proposed state/solution.", 0120 ; Examiner Note: an SLO equates to a tenet, and SLO evaluation values equate to dimensions.)
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art, before the effective filing date, to combine the teachings of Roddom in view of Turi in further view of Mahacek in further view of Venugopal with those of Yadwadkar in order to execute workloads in environments which better achieve SLOs and optimization goals of the workloads through SLO weights (Yadwadkar, [0108]).
As per claim 12, it is a computer program product claim comprising substantially the same limitations as claim 5, and as such, it is rejected for substantially the same reasons.
As per claim 18, it is a computer system claim comprising substantially the same limitations as claim 5, and as such, it is rejected for substantially the same reasons.
Claims 9 and 15 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Roddom (US 20230353464 A1) in view of Turi (US 20230155911 A1) in further view of Mahacek (US 11595306 B2) in further view of Venugopal (US 20210109830 A1) in further view of Liokumovich (US 20250293964 A1).
As per claim 9, Roddom in view of Turi in further view of Mahacek in further view of Venugopal fully discloses the limitations of claim 1, but does not disclose generating SRE maturity assessments based on a trigger event.
However, Liokumovich discloses:
the first, second, and third site reliability engineering maturity assessments are generated based on a trigger event associated with at least one of the first hybrid cloud component, the second hybrid cloud component, and the application. (“The scheduler 260 periodically triggers SLO evaluations defined in an SLA, for example monthly and forwards this to the SLA evaluator 265. The SLA evaluator 265 messages the SLA storage 255 to recover SLO models associated with the SLA. An example SLO model was illustrated in FIG. 3. Upon receiving the SLO models, the SLA evaluator 265 requests the associated KPI or performance metric values from the KPI storage, which may return an appropriate performance metric data structure such as a tensor which groups the KPI according to coordinates of one or more dimensions.”, 0058)
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art, before the effective filing date, to combine the teachings of Roddom in view of Turi in further view of Mahacek in further view of Venugopal with those of Liokumovich in order to provide a method for metric collection which reduces resource overhead (Liokumovich, [0030]).
As per claim 15, it is a computer program product claim comprising substantially the same limitations as claim 9, and as such, it is rejected for substantially the same reasons.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure:
Padmanaban (US 20240264831 A1) – discloses a system and method for automatically determining whether an application is SRE ready for production deployment.
Dennis (US 20230252390 A1) – discloses a method for providing common objective performance metrics across teams, and guiding performance of targeted behaviors based on site reliability engineering principles for improved system reliability and performance.
THIS ACTION IS MADE FINAL. Applicant is reminded of the extension of time policy as set forth in 37 CFR 1.136(a).
A shortened statutory period for reply to this final action is set to expire THREE MONTHS from the mailing date of this action. In the event a first reply is filed within TWO MONTHS of the mailing date of this final action and the advisory action is not mailed until after the end of the THREE-MONTH shortened statutory period, then the shortened statutory period will expire on the date the advisory action is mailed, and any nonprovisional extension fee (37 CFR 1.17(a)) pursuant to 37 CFR 1.136(a) will be calculated from the mailing date of the advisory action. In no event, however, will the statutory period for reply expire later than SIX MONTHS from the mailing date of this final action.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to ROSS MICHAEL VINCENT whose telephone number is (703)756-1408. The examiner can normally be reached Mon-Fri 8:30AM-5:30PM.
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/R.M.V/
Examiner, Art Unit 2196
/APRIL Y BLAIR/Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2196
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