DETAILED ACTION
Notice of Pre-AIA or AIA Status
The present application, filed on or after March 16, 2013, is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA .
Response to Amendment
The amendment filed on October 21, 2025 has been entered. Claims 1, 4, 8-10, 13, 17-19 have been amended. Claims 1-20 are currently pending in the application.
With regard to the 35 U.S.C 112(b) rejection directed towards claims 9 and 18, the rejection is hereby withdrawn in view of the amendment to claims 9 and 18.
Response to Arguments
35 U.S.C 103
Applicant’s arguments filed with respect to the rejection(s) of claims 1-20 under U.S.C 103 have been fully considered and are persuasive. Therefore, the rejection has been withdrawn. However upon further consideration and in light of Applicant’s amendments, new grounds of rejection are made in view of Alluboyina (U.S Pub # 20210103499).
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 1-5, 7-14, 16-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Chen (US Pub # 20180307537) in view of Alluboyina (U.S Pub # 20210103499).
With regards to claim 1, Chen discloses a method comprising:
identifying a plurality of persistent volume claims ([0032] mounted directory /data may be flagged with a persistence status of persistent);
identifying a plurality of storage volumes associated with the namespace, wherein each of the plurality of storage volumes is bound to at least one of the plurality of persistent volume claims ([0032] data directory may then be mounted to the upper system layer for container 162 as a mounted directory. directory may be a unified part of the upper system layer with a shared namespace with the rest of the upper system layer. After being mounted, the /data directory may be a unified part of the upper system layer with a shared namespace with the rest of the upper system layer. In an example, each directory (including mounted directories) in the upper system layer shares the same namespace);
pausing transactions executed on each of the plurality of storage volumes ([0034] container may be frozen to allow for the capture of a snapshot);
capturing a snapshot of each of the plurality of storage volumes ([0034] snapshot of container);
creating a copy of the one or more application resources ([0034] snapshot of container where applications are executed); and
capturing a namespace snapshot by capturing the snapshots of each of the plurality of storage volumes and the copy of the one or more application resources ([0032-0034] snapshot of containers which contains namespace and applications).
Chen does not disclose however Alluboyina discloses:
identifying one or more application resources associated with a plurality of applications executing on a plurality of nodes, wherein the plurality of applications is associated with a namespace, each application of the plurality of applications implementing a role of a multi-role application and having interfaces and services exposed in the namespace ([0137] Accordingly, a “role” may itself be a standalone application, such as a database, webserver, blogging application, or any other application. Examples of roles include the roles used to implement multi-role applications. [0140] provision storage and compute nodes to implement bundled applications [0145] interfaces and services exposed by a role may be included in the namespace).
It would have been obvious for one of ordinary skill in the art before the date the current invention was effectively filed to have modified the system of Chen by Alluboyina to execute applications to implement roles on multiple computing nodes.
One of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to make this modification in order to implement a multi-role application implementing services, storage volumes, database and webservers (Alluboyina [0002]).
Claims 10 and 19 correspond to claim 1 and are rejected accordingly.
With regards to claim 2, Chen further discloses:
resuming the transactions executed on at least a portion of the plurality of storage volumes ([0034, 0039] after the executing snapshot is complete, persistent storage may be resumed); and
saving the namespace snapshot to a snapshot storage resource ([0046] backup and recovery features on network storage nodes).
Claims 11 and 20 correspond to claim 2 and are rejected accordingly.
With regards to claim 3, Chen further discloses:
wherein the snapshot storage resource is independent of and external to the namespace ([0046] network storage nodes).
Claim 12 corresponds to claim 3 and is rejected accordingly.
With regards to claim 4, Chen further discloses:
importing the namespace snapshot into a second namespace ([0043] image files for containers may be copied to a new VM host);
identifying a plurality of data blocks within a plurality of storage volumes ([0043] image files);
verifying there are no applications within the second namespace differing from the one or more application resources captured by the namespace snapshot ([0043] image files are copied); and
hydrating the plurality of data blocks with data from the namespace snapshot ([0043] migrate container cluster to the new VM).
Claim 13 corresponds to claim 4 and is rejected accordingly.
With regards to claim 5, Chen further discloses:
wherein each persistent volume claim is mounted to an application and exposed to application data, wherein application data comprises application metadata ([0027-0028] mounted to a VM and stores metadata associated with the image file).
Claim 14 corresponds to claim 5 and is rejected accordingly.
With regards to claim 7, Chen further discloses:
wherein the namespace snapshot does not capture any ephemeral volumes bound to the namespace ([0033-0034] directories flagged as temporary may be deleted from persistent storage 137 to reinitialize container 1).
Claim 16 corresponds to claim 7 and is rejected accordingly.
With regards to claim 8, Chen further discloses:
wherein pausing the transactions comprises quiescing each of the plurality of storage volumes, and wherein the transactions comprise input and output transactions to and from the plurality of storage volumes ([0039] freezing transactions).
Claim 17 corresponds to claim 8 and is rejected accordingly.
With regards to claim 9, Chen further discloses:
wherein the transactions on the plurality of storage volumes are paused concurrently ([0039] freezing storage).
Claim 18 corresponds to claim 9 and is rejected accordingly.
Claims 6 and 15 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Chen (US Pub # 20180307537) in view of Alluboyina (U.S Pub # 20210103499) and in further view of Francis (U.S Pat # 6665861).
With regards to claim 6, Chen does not disclose however Francis discloses:
wherein the namespace snapshot further comprises undeployed application metadata ([Col. 6 lines 24-34] undeployed application metadata).
It would have been obvious for one of ordinary skill in the art before the date the current invention was effectively filed to have modified the system of Chen and Alluboyina by the system of Francis to include undeployed application metadata.
One of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to make this modification in order to provide portability to undeployed java bean (Francis [Col. 1 lines 53-55]).
Claim 15 corresponds to claim 6 and is rejected accordingly.
Conclusion
Applicant's amendment necessitated the new ground(s) of rejection presented in this Office action. Accordingly, THIS ACTION IS MADE FINAL. See MPEP § 706.07(a). Applicant is reminded of the extension of time policy as set forth in 37 CFR 1.136(a).
A shortened statutory period for reply to this final action is set to expire THREE MONTHS from the mailing date of this action. In the event a first reply is filed within TWO MONTHS of the mailing date of this final action and the advisory action is not mailed until after the end of the THREE-MONTH shortened statutory period, then the shortened statutory period will expire on the date the advisory action is mailed, and any nonprovisional extension fee (37 CFR 1.17(a)) pursuant to 37 CFR 1.136(a) will be calculated from the mailing date of the advisory action. In no event, however, will the statutory period for reply expire later than SIX MONTHS from the mailing date of this final action.
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/TONY WU/ Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2166