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 .
This is a Non-Final Office Action Correspondence in response to U.S. Application No. 18/377,160 filed on 10/05/2023.
Claims 1-22 are pending. Claims 1, 21 and 22 are independent claims.
Priority
Applicant’s claim for the benefit of prior-filed applications under 35 U.S.C. 119(e) or under 35 U.S.C. 120, 121, 365(c), or 386(c) is acknowledged, which is for provisional patent application 63/434,846 and 63/434,879 filed on 12/22/2022.
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statement(s) (IDS) submitted on 06/11/2024 and 11/25/2025 is/are in compliance with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.97. Accordingly, the information disclosure statement(s) is/are being considered by the examiner.
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.
Claim(s) 1-9 and 14-22 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Wang et al. (U.S. PG Pub. No. 2020/0019424 A1, hereinafter “Wang”) in view of Radu (NPL Web download, “Azure Stack Hub Infrastructure as code using Terraform”).
Regarding claim 1, Wang teaches a method comprising:
creating a volume group comprising an initial snapshot of a virtual machine (VM) residing in an initial environment, the VM in an initial configuration (VM1), wherein the VM is designated for replication in a cloud services provider infrastructure (CSPI) (Wang ¶¶0031-0032).
Wang fails to explicitly teach generating a terraform stack based on the initial snapshot, wherein execution of the terraform stack in an environment causes replication of VM1 in that environment;
providing the terraform stack to a user.
However, in the same field of endeavor, Radu teaches generating a terraform stack based on the initial snapshot (Radu page 2, i.e., run ‘terraform init’ to check configuration and download all required provider plugins (e.g., Azure Stack)), wherein execution of the terraform stack in an environment causes replication of VM1 in that environment (Radu page 3, i.e., ‘terraform apply’ to replication of VM1);
providing the terraform stack to a user (Radu page 4, i.e., “And finally, we are tying all the components together by deploying a virtual machine using the previously created NIC and public IP”).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Wang by incorporating the teachings of Radu. The motivation would be for allowing users to use a single toolset to configure and deploy infrastructure, configuration and application deployments on different platforms and layers (Radu page 1).
Wang as modified by Radu also teaches generating a subsequent snapshot of the VM in a subsequent configuration (VM2) (Wang Fig. 1 and ¶0025);
generating a delta file characterizing the difference between the initial snapshot stored in the volume group and the subsequent snapshot (Wang ¶0025, i.e., a patch file);
generating a delta terraform stack based on the delta file, wherein execution of the delta terraform stack causes previously replicated VM1 to update to replicate VM2 (Radu pages 3-4, i.e., “We are now going to add a few more resources to our deployment”); and
providing the delta terraform stack to the user (Radu page 5, “Let us now apply the modified configuration. Run ‘terraform apply’ The deployment itself will take some time and after a few minutes you will see a fully featured Azure VM in your resource group on Azure Stack Hub”).
As to claim 2, Wang as modified by Radu also teaches the method of claim 1, wherein the VM is not located in the CSPI (Wang ¶0005, i.e., on-premise destination of VM platform).
As to claim 3, Wang as modified by Radu also teaches the method of claim 1, wherein the initial environment is an on-premise environment (Wang ¶0005).
As to claim 4, Wang as modified by Radu also teaches the method of claim 1, wherein the initial environment VM is located in a cloud environment distinct from the CSPI (Wang ¶0005).
As to claim 5, Wang as modified by Radu also teaches the method of claim 1, further comprising executing the stack in a user tenancy in the CSPI to replicate VM1 (Radu page 3, i.e. Run ‘terraform apply’).
As to claim 6, Wang as modified by Radu also teaches the method of claim 5, further comprising executing the delta stack in the user tenancy to replicate VM2 (Radu page 5).
As to claim 7, Wang as modified by Radu also teaches the method of claim 6, wherein the subsequent snapshot is generated after replicating VM1 (Wang Fig. 5).
As of claim 8, Wang as modified by Radu also teaches the method of claim 7, further comprising:
generating additional subsequent snapshots (Wang ¶0025, i.e., additional snapshots are generated at a later time point); and
generating a corresponding delta file for each of the subsequent snapshots (Wang ¶0025, i.e., a patch file that consists the list of differences is generated).
As to claim 9, Wang as modified by Radu also teaches the method of claim 1, further comprising replicating at least a portion of the volume group (Wang ¶0024, i.e., a VM package), wherein replicating at least a portion of the volume group comprises:
identifying the volume group (Wang ¶0024, i.e., root volume for the VM); and
replicating a boot volume from the volume group (Wang ¶0024, i.e., a software stack that is ready to run on the VM platform).
As to claim 14, Wang as modified by Radu also teaches the method of claim 1, further comprising provisioning a replication server from a migration control plane into a user tenancy in the CSPI, wherein the VM is subsequently replicated into the user tenancy (Wang ¶¶0044-0045, i.e., VM package for backup and restore).
As to claim 15, Wang as modified by Radu also teaches the method of claim 14, wherein the initial environment includes a replication plugin (Wang ¶0045, i.e., backup and restore of VMs).
As to claim 16, Wang as modified by Radu also teaches the method of claim 15, wherein creating the volume group comprises:
generating the snapshot of the VM with the replication plugin (Wang ¶0045); and
storing the snapshot of the VM in an object storage (Wang ¶0045).
As to claim 17, Wang as modified by Radu also teaches the method of claim 16, wherein creating the volume group includes the replication server writing a copy of the snapshot of the VM into block storage to create the volume group (Wang ¶¶0031-0032).
As to claim 18, Wang as modified by Radu also teaches the method of claim 1, wherein the delta file comprises a single file wherein the single file characterize a difference between the initial snapshot of the VM and the subsequent snapshot of the VM (Wang ¶0025, i.e., a patch file).
As to claim 19, Wang as modified by Radu also teaches the method of claim 1, wherein the delta file comprises a plurality of files, wherein the plurality of files together characterize a difference between the initial snapshot of the VM and the subsequent snapshot of the VM (Wang ¶0034, i.e., files based on different formats).
As to claim 20, Wang as modified by Radu also teaches the method of claim 1, wherein creating the volume group comprising the initial snapshot of a virtual machine (VM) residing in an initial environment comprises:
creating a boot volume (Wang ¶0024);
creating a data volume associated with the boot volume (Wang ¶0024); and
assigning an identifier to each of the boot volume and the data volume (Wang ¶0024, i.e., a VM package), wherein the identifier is included in the terraform stack (Radu page 4, i.e., resource "azurestack_virtual_machine").
Regarding claim 21, Wang as modified by Radu also teaches a system comprising:
memory comprising a volume database (Wang ¶0051); and
a processor configured to perform the same method as recited in claim 1.
Claim 21 is similarly rejected.
Claim 22 recites the limitations substantially similar to those of claim 1 and is similarly rejected.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 10-13 are 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.
The features of the claims limitations in claims 10-13 in combination with the other limitations recited in the context of their respective base claim(s) is allowable subject matter.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure. See Form PTO-892.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to ALEXANDER KHONG whose telephone number is (571)270-7127. The examiner can normally be reached Mon-Fri 8am-5pm EST.
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/ALEXANDER KHONG/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2168