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 action is responsive to the Applicant’s amendments filed on 06/02/2026. Claims 1 and 3-8 remain pending in the application. Claims 1 and 6-7 have been amended. Claim 2 has been canceled. Claims 9-10 have been newly added. Any examiner’s note, objection, and rejection not repeated is withdrawn due to Applicant’s amendment.
Priority
Receipt is acknowledged of certified copies of papers required by 37 CFR 1.55.
This application claims priority to Korean Patent Application No. 10-2022-0186416, filed December 27, 2022. The priority benefit is acknowledged and entered by the examiner.
Examiner’s Note
The Examiner cites particular columns, paragraphs, figures, and line numbers in the references as applied to the claims below for the convenience of the applicant. Although the specified citations are representative of the teachings in the art and are applied to the specific limitations within the individual claim, other passages and figures may also apply. It is respectfully requested that, in preparing responses, the Applicant fully consider the references in its entirety as potentially teaching all or part of the claimed invention, as well as the context of the passage as taught by the prior art or disclosed 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.
Claims 1, 4, 6-7, and 9 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Meduri et al. (US 11055273 B1) hereafter Meduri in view of Bequet et al. (US 20220253335 A1) hereafter Bequet, further in view of Kammath et al. (US 20210182165 A1) hereafter Kammath, further in view of Borodin et al. (US 10514989 B1) hereafter Borodin.
Regarding claim 1, Meduri teaches:
A container-based high availability big data framework system comprising:
an external server configured to provide structured data (Col. 8, lines 48-61; “computing resource monitoring service may include a front-end server, which may be configured to obtain measurements, in the form of event data 118, from a variety of different sources... In response to a request from the customer 102 to obtain event data 118 for its one or more containers 110, the front-end server of the computing resource monitoring service 120 may access its datastore of event data to identify any event data obtained from the event applier service 116 that can be provided to the customer 102 to fulfill its request”, where the front end server corresponds to the server external to the system that provides data. Col. 28 lines 54-59 confirm that this data may be either structured or unstructured data, “server(s) may also include database servers, including without limitation those commercially available from Oracle®, Microsoft®, Sybase and IBM® as well as open-source servers such as MySQL, Postgres, SQLite, MongoDB, and any other server capable of storing, retrieving, and accessing structured or unstructured data”);
a data collection server configured to collect structured data by requesting the structured data from the external server (Col. 7, lines 36-47; “event applier service 116 provisions one or more worker systems that can process the state change information 114. A worker system may be a software container, host, server, process, or application that is configured to obtain state change information for a particular container, a set of containers, or corresponding to a particular customer or delivery method. For instance, the event applier service 116 may provision a worker system and provide the worker system with a task definition for processing a portion of the state change information 114 obtained from the transaction journal 112.”, worker system, which may be a server, corresponds to the data collection server, which is configured to obtain state change information from the customer servers at the front-end, corresponding to the external server. Col. 28 lines 54-59 confirm that this data may be either structured or unstructured data, “server(s) may also include database servers, including without limitation those commercially available from Oracle®, Microsoft®, Sybase and IBM® as well as open-source servers such as MySQL, Postgres, SQLite, MongoDB, and any other server capable of storing, retrieving, and accessing structured or unstructured data”);
and a monitoring service configured to detect the occurrence of an error during collection of the structured data (Col. 15, line 62 – Col. 16, line 5; “The container agents 222 may be configured to monitor the health of the containers within the respective container instances 218 (e.g., report heartbeats signaling that the container instance is operating, report lifespans of containers, and report container statuses and occurrences of container errors), and may further be configured to perform actions based on the occurrence of certain events. For example, if a container agent detects that a container has encountered an error and ceased operation, the container agent may automatically cause a new container to be generated to replace the malfunctioning container”, where container agents correspond to the monitoring system that may perform automatically perform actions based on the occurrence of certain events, such as detecting when a container has errored and operation has stopped, corresponding to generating a trigger when detecting an occurrence of an error while the structured data are collected by the monitoring service. The monitoring service is part of a server, as evidenced by Col. 8, lines 55-58; “In response to a request from the customer 102 to obtain event data 118 for its one or more containers 110, the front-end server of the computing resource monitoring service 120”. Occurring while structured data is collected is evidenced in Col. 16, lines 6-12; “scheduler 208 may take certain actions in response to events reported to it by the container agents 222. In the above example, it may be the scheduler 208 that causes a new container to be generated to replace a malfunctioning container. The customer owner of the container may specify conditions, events, and actions for the scheduler 208 and/or container agent”, occurring in response to real time structured data being received corresponding to occurring while the structured data is being collected. Col. 28 lines 54-59 confirm that this data may be either structured or unstructured data, “server(s) may also include database servers, including without limitation those commercially available from Oracle®, Microsoft®, Sybase and IBM® as well as open-source servers such as MySQL, Postgres, SQLite, MongoDB, and any other server capable of storing, retrieving, and accessing structured or unstructured data”.);
generate a trigger in response to the detected error (Col. 15, line 62 – Col. 16, line 5; “The container agents 222 may be configured to monitor the health of the containers within the respective container instances 218 (e.g., report heartbeats signaling that the container instance is operating, report lifespans of containers, and report container statuses and occurrences of container errors), and may further be configured to perform actions based on the occurrence of certain events. For example, if a container agent detects that a container has encountered an error and ceased operation, the container agent may automatically cause a new container to be generated to replace the malfunctioning container”, where container agents correspond to the monitoring system that may perform automatically perform actions based on the occurrence of certain events, such as detecting when a container has errored and operation has stopped, corresponding to generating a trigger when detecting an occurrence of an error while the structured data are collected. The response to the error requires a condition or signal that initiates the error response action, corresponding to the claimed trigger.).
Meduri does not teach a docker container environment; requesting data at a predetermined time interval.
However, Bequet teaches:
based on a docker container environment (Paragraph 93; “dynamic allocation of containers providing a dynamically alterable quantity of semi-separated execution environments has become a more widely favored approach to addressing this challenge. Particular examples of resource allocation software include, and are not limited to, Docker...”);
requesting data at a predetermined time interval (Paragraph 308; “Primary control node 402 may, for example, transmit one or more communications to backup control nodes 404 and 406 (and, for example, to other control or worker nodes within the communications grid). Such communications may [be] sent periodically, at fixed time intervals”).
Meduri and Bequet are considered to be analogous to the claimed invention because they are in the same field of container management. Therefore, it would have been obvious to someone of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified Meduri to incorporate the teachings of Bequet and have the server based on docker, and have requested data at a predetermined time interval. A person of ordinary skill in the art would have recognized docker as a known container platform in the art whose implementation would yield the predictable result of lightweight container orchestration. Further, a person of ordinary skill in the art would have recognized periodic requests for data to be a known method in the art yielding the predictable result of balancing real-time awareness with resource efficiency.
Meduri in view of Bequet does not teach a monitoring server distinct from the data collection server and external server, the monitoring server being in communication with the data collection server.
However, Kammath teaches:
a monitoring server distinct from the data collection server, the monitoring server being in communication with the data collection server (Paragraph 32; “application remote collector 116 may transmit the performance metrics, the first information, and the second information associated with the plurality of resources to application monitoring server 118 via the network. In one example, application remote collector 116 may be implemented in a computing device that is connected external to application monitoring server 118”, where the application remote collector 116 that collects measurements corresponds to the data collection server that communicates the collected information to application monitoring server 118 over the network, corresponding to a monitoring server distinct from and in communication with the data collection server.).
Meduri, Bequet, and Kammath are considered to be analogous to the claimed invention because they are in the same field of resource monitoring. Therefore, it would have been obvious to someone of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified Meduri in view of Bequet to incorporate the teachings of Kammath and have a monitoring server distinct from the data collection server in communication with the data collection server. A person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention would have found providing a monitoring server with a distinct data collection server to be a known concept in the art because separating data collection from monitoring functions is a known method for allowing modular functionality and would facilitate the respective collection and monitoring operations, whose implementation would yield the predictable result of allowing the monitoring server to receive and process measurements collected by the data collection server. Further, a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention would have found providing an external server as taught by Meduri separate from the monitoring server and data collection server and providing data collection, monitoring functions, and the external server on separate servers to be a known method in the art because Kammath expressly contemplates implementing remote collector 116 on a device external to the monitoring server 118, thereby enforcing separation of roles, whose implementation on the external server of Meduri would have yielded the predictable result of allowing functionality to be performed modularly by separate servers while maintaining communication between the servers.
Meduri in view of Bequet, further in view of Kammath does not teach cause the data collection server to initiate execution of a new docker image on the data collection server based on the trigger; wherein the data collection server is configured to execute the new docker image while recovering a docker image stopped due to the error, to maintain continuity of processing.
However, Borodin teaches:
initiate execution of a new system (Col. 9, lines 5-9; “Running recovery 10 process may be initiated upon failure of a virtual machine (VM). Referring now also to FIG. 2, running recovery process 10 (via, e.g., backup agent 210) may emulate 100 the VM to be recovered (e.g., VM 202).”);
execute the new system while recovering a system stopped due to the error, to maintain continuity of processing (Col. 2, lines 16-19; “When executed by a processor, the instructions may cause the processor to perform operations for recovering a virtual machine while running the virtual machine from a backup archive.”, Col. 9 lines 5-6 discloses “Running recovery 10 process may be initiated upon failure of a virtual machine (VM).”, in which a person of ordinary skill in the art would recognize that a system error had occurred such that it caused the system to fail.).
Meduri, Bequet, Kammath, and Borodin are considered to be analogous to the claimed invention because they are in the same field of resource monitoring. Therefore, it would have been obvious to someone of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified Meduri in view of Bequet, further in view of Kammath to incorporate the teachings of Borodin and have executed a new system while recovering a system stopped due to an error to maintain continuity of processing. A person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention would have recognized execution of a backup system while deploying recovery procedures to be a known method in the art of error recovery due to interruptions in processing operations and increased system downtime, whose implementation would yield the predictable result of allowing processing to continue while the stopped system is being recovered. Further, a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention would have recognized that error recovery procedures are a known method in the art whose implementation could be extended to a variety of different systems, and would be applicable to the docker images as taught by Meduri, yielding the predictable result of allowing docker images to be deployed and allowing continuous processing of docker images through potential errors. A person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention would have recognized that initiating execution of a new system to be a known concept in the art because initiating replacement systems provides an alternative processing environment when continued execution of the original system is undesirable or unavailable, yielding the predictable result of providing a system capable of commencing operation in place of the existing system. Further, initiating execution of the new system on the data collection server of Meduri in response to an error-triggered condition would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention as error detection provides an indicator of whether the existing system is capable of continuing to perform operations, yielding the predictable result of automatically initiating failover procedures on error detection.
Regarding claim 6, Meduri teaches:
A method of operating a container-based high availability big data framework system, the method comprising:
requesting structured data from an external server (Col. 8, lines 48-61; “computing resource monitoring service may include a front-end server, which may be configured to obtain measurements, in the form of event data 118, from a variety of different sources... In response to a request from the customer 102 to obtain event data 118 for its one or more containers 110, the front-end server of the computing resource monitoring service 120 may access its datastore of event data to identify any event data obtained from the event applier service 116 that can be provided to the customer 102 to fulfill its request”, where the front end server corresponds to the server external to the system, the customer servers, that provides data. Col. 28 lines 54-59 confirm that this data may be either structured or unstructured data, “server(s) may also include database servers, including without limitation those commercially available from Oracle®, Microsoft®, Sybase and IBM® as well as open-source servers such as MySQL, Postgres, SQLite, MongoDB, and any other server capable of storing, retrieving, and accessing structured or unstructured data”);
storing the structured data provided by the external server in a database (Col. 7, lines 36-47; “event applier service 116 provisions one or more worker systems that can process the state change information 114. A worker system may be a software container, host, server, process, or application that is configured to obtain state change information for a particular container, a set of containers, or corresponding to a particular customer or delivery method. For instance, the event applier service 116 may provision a worker system and provide the worker system with a task definition for processing a portion of the state change information 114 obtained from the transaction journal 112.”, worker system, which may be a server, corresponds to the data collection server, which is configured to obtain state change information in a database. Col. 28 lines 54-59 confirm that this data may be either structured or unstructured data, “server(s) may also include database servers, including without limitation those commercially available from Oracle®, Microsoft®, Sybase and IBM® as well as open-source servers such as MySQL, Postgres, SQLite, MongoDB, and any other server capable of storing, retrieving, and accessing structured or unstructured data”);
detecting, at a monitoring server, an occurrence of an error while the structured data are being collected by a data collection server (Col. 15, line 62 – Col. 16, line 5; “The container agents 222 may be configured to monitor the health of the containers within the respective container instances 218 (e.g., report heartbeats signaling that the container instance is operating, report lifespans of containers, and report container statuses and occurrences of container errors), and may further be configured to perform actions based on the occurrence of certain events. For example, if a container agent detects that a container has encountered an error and ceased operation, the container agent may automatically cause a new container to be generated to replace the malfunctioning container”, where container agents correspond to the monitoring system that may perform automatically perform actions based on the occurrence of certain events, such as detecting when a container has errored and operation has stopped, corresponding to detecting an occurrence of an error while the structured data are collected. Occurring while structured data is collected is evidenced in Col. 16, lines 6-12; “scheduler 208 may take certain actions in response to events reported to it by the container agents 222. In the above example, it may be the scheduler 208 that causes a new container to be generated to replace a malfunctioning container. The customer owner of the container may specify conditions, events, and actions for the scheduler 208 and/or container agent”, occurring in response to real time structured data being received corresponding to occurring while the structured data is being collected. Col. 28 lines 54-59 confirm that this data may be either structured or unstructured data, “server(s) may also include database servers, including without limitation those commercially available from Oracle®, Microsoft®, Sybase and IBM® as well as open-source servers such as MySQL, Postgres, SQLite, MongoDB, and any other server capable of storing, retrieving, and accessing structured or unstructured data”. The data collection server is further disclosed in Col. 7, lines 36-47; “event applier service 116 provisions one or more worker systems that can process the state change information 114. A worker system may be a software container, host, server, process, or application that is configured to obtain state change information for a particular container, a set of containers, or corresponding to a particular customer or delivery method. For instance, the event applier service 116 may provision a worker system and provide the worker system with a task definition for processing a portion of the state change information 114 obtained from the transaction journal 112.”, worker system, which may be a server, corresponds to the data collection server);
generating, by the monitoring server, a trigger or execution command in response to detecting the occurrence of the error (Col. 15, line 62 – Col. 16, line 5; “The container agents 222 may be configured to monitor the health of the containers within the respective container instances 218 (e.g., report heartbeats signaling that the container instance is operating, report lifespans of containers, and report container statuses and occurrences of container errors), and may further be configured to perform actions based on the occurrence of certain events. For example, if a container agent detects that a container has encountered an error and ceased operation, the container agent may automatically cause a new container to be generated to replace the malfunctioning container”, where container agents correspond to the monitoring system that may perform automatically perform actions based on the occurrence of certain events, such as detecting when a container has errored and operation has stopped, corresponding to generating a trigger when detecting an occurrence of an error while the structured data are collected. The response to the error requires a condition or signal that initiates the error response action, corresponding to the claimed trigger.).
Meduri does not teach that the image is a docker image; or requesting data at a predetermined time.
However, Bequet teaches:
a docker image (Paragraph 93; “dynamic allocation of containers providing a dynamically alterable quantity of semi-separated execution environments has become a more widely favored approach to addressing this challenge. Particular examples of resource allocation software include, and are not limited to, Docker...”);
requesting data at a predetermined time (Paragraph 308; “Primary control node 402 may, for example, transmit one or more communications to backup control nodes 404 and 406 (and, for example, to other control or worker nodes within the communications grid). Such communications may [be] sent periodically, at fixed time intervals”, each of the fixed intervals being predetermined times.).
Meduri and Bequet are considered to be analogous to the claimed invention because they are in the same field of container management. Therefore, it would have been obvious to someone of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified Meduri to incorporate the teachings of Bequet and have the server based on docker, and have requested data at a predetermined time interval. A person of ordinary skill in the art would have recognized docker as a known container platform in the art whose implementation would yield the predictable result of lightweight container orchestration. Further, a person of ordinary skill in the art would have recognized periodic requests for data to be a known method in the art yielding the predictable result of balancing real-time awareness with resource efficiency.
Meduri in view of Bequet does not teach a monitoring server distinct from the data collection server and external server, the monitoring server being in communication with the data collection server.
However, Kammath teaches:
a monitoring server distinct from the data collection server, the monitoring server being in communication with the data collection server (Paragraph 32; “application remote collector 116 may transmit the performance metrics, the first information, and the second information associated with the plurality of resources to application monitoring server 118 via the network. In one example, application remote collector 116 may be implemented in a computing device that is connected external to application monitoring server 118”, where the application remote collector 116 that collects measurements corresponds to the data collection server that communicates the collected information to application monitoring server 118 over the network, corresponding to a monitoring server distinct from and in communication with the data collection server.).
Meduri, Bequet, and Kammath are considered to be analogous to the claimed invention because they are in the same field of resource monitoring. Therefore, it would have been obvious to someone of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified Meduri in view of Bequet to incorporate the teachings of Kammath and have a monitoring server distinct from the data collection server in communication with the data collection server. A person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention would have found providing a monitoring server with a distinct data collection server to be a known concept in the art because separating data collection from monitoring functions is a known method for allowing modular functionality and would facilitate the respective collection and monitoring operations, whose implementation would yield the predictable result of allowing the monitoring server to receive and process measurements collected by the data collection server. Further, a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention would have found providing an external server as taught by Meduri separate from the monitoring server and data collection server and providing data collection, monitoring functions, and the external server on separate servers to be a known method in the art because Kammath expressly contemplates implementing remote collector 116 on a device external to the monitoring server 118, thereby enforcing separation of roles, whose implementation on the external server of Meduri would have yielded the predictable result of allowing functionality to be performed modularly by separate servers while maintaining communication between the servers.
Meduri in view of Bequet, further in view of Kammath does not teach causing the data collection server to initiate execution of a new docker image based on the trigger or execution command; wherein the data collection server is configured to execute the new docker image while recovering a docker image stopped due to the error, to maintain continuity of processing.
However, Borodin teaches:
initiate execution of a new system (Col. 9, lines 5-9; “Running recovery 10 process may be initiated upon failure of a virtual machine (VM). Referring now also to FIG. 2, running recovery process 10 (via, e.g., backup agent 210) may emulate 100 the VM to be recovered (e.g., VM 202).”);
execute the new system while recovering a system stopped due to the error, to maintain continuity of processing (Col. 2, lines 16-19; “When executed by a processor, the instructions may cause the processor to perform operations for recovering a virtual machine while running the virtual machine from a backup archive.”, Col. 9 lines 5-6 discloses “Running recovery 10 process may be initiated upon failure of a virtual machine (VM).”, in which a person of ordinary skill in the art would recognize that a system error had occurred such that it caused the system to fail.).
Meduri, Bequet, Kammath, and Borodin are considered to be analogous to the claimed invention because they are in the same field of resource monitoring. Therefore, it would have been obvious to someone of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified Meduri in view of Bequet, further in view of Kammath to incorporate the teachings of Borodin and have executed a new system while recovering a system stopped due to an error to maintain continuity of processing. A person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention would have recognized execution of a backup system while deploying recovery procedures to be a known method in the art of error recovery due to interruptions in processing operations and increased system downtime, whose implementation would yield the predictable result of allowing processing to continue while the stopped system is being recovered. Further, a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention would have recognized that error recovery procedures are a known method in the art whose implementation could be extended to a variety of different systems, and would be applicable to the docker images as taught by Meduri, yielding the predictable result of allowing docker images to be deployed and allowing continuous processing of docker images through potential errors. A person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention would have recognized that initiating execution of a new system to be a known concept in the art because initiating replacement systems provides an alternative processing environment when continued execution of the original system is undesirable or unavailable, yielding the predictable result of providing a data collection server capable of continuing operation in place of the existing system in the event of errors. Further, initiating execution of the new system on the data collection server of Meduri in response to an error-triggered condition would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention as error detection provides an indicator of whether the existing system is capable of continuing to perform operations, yielding the predictable result of automatically initiating failover procedures on error detection.
Regarding claim 4, Meduri in view of Bequet, further in view of Kammath, further in view of Borodin teach the system of claim 1. Meduri teaches:
the external server is configured to provide unstructured data to the data collection server (Col. 8, lines 48-61; “computing resource monitoring service may include a front-end server, which may be configured to obtain measurements, in the form of event data 118, from a variety of different sources, including customers of the computing resource service provider, various other services of the computing resource service provider, and computing resources made available to the customers through the various services. In response to a request from the customer 102 to obtain event data 118 for its one or more containers 110, the front-end server of the computing resource monitoring service 120 may access its datastore of event data to identify any event data obtained from the event applier service 116 that can be provided to the customer 102 to fulfill its request”, where the front-end server corresponds to the external server that provides data to the data collection server to fulfill the request. The provided data may be unstructured data, as evidenced by Col. 28, lines 54-59; “The server(s) may also include database servers, including without limitation those commercially available from Oracle®, Microsoft®, Sybase and IBM® as well as open-source servers such as MySQL, Postgres, SQLite, MongoDB, and any other server capable of storing, retrieving, and accessing structured or unstructured data.”);
and the data collection server is configured to store the unstructured data in a file transfer protocol (FTP) (Col. 7, lines 36-47; “event applier service 116 provisions one or more worker systems that can process the state change information 114. A worker system may be a software container, host, server, process, or application that is configured to obtain state change information for a particular container, a set of containers, or corresponding to a particular customer or delivery method. For instance, the event applier service 116 may provision a worker system and provide the worker system with a task definition for processing a portion of the state change information 114 obtained from the transaction journal 112”, the worker system may be a server, corresponding to the data collection server, which sends the data for storage, where the protocol used may be FTP, as evidenced by Col. 28, lines 17-24; “Various embodiments of the present disclosure utilize at least one network that would be familiar to those skilled in the art for supporting communications using any of a variety of commercially-available protocols, such as... File Transfer Protocol (“FTP”)”. The provided data may be unstructured data, as evidenced by Col. 28, lines 54-59; “The server(s) may also include database servers, including without limitation those commercially available from Oracle®, Microsoft®, Sybase and IBM® as well as open-source servers such as MySQL, Postgres, SQLite, MongoDB, and any other server capable of storing, retrieving, and accessing structured or unstructured data.”).
Regarding claim 7, Meduri in view of Bequet, further in view of Kammath, further in view of Borodin teach the method of claim 6. Meduri teaches:
a data collection server (Col. 7, lines 36-47; “event applier service 116 provisions one or more worker systems that can process the state change information 114. A worker system may be a software container, host, server, process, or application that is configured to obtain state change information for a particular container, a set of containers, or corresponding to a particular customer or delivery method. For instance, the event applier service 116 may provision a worker system and provide the worker system with a task definition for processing a portion of the state change information 114 obtained from the transaction journal 112.”, worker system, which may be a server, corresponds to the data collection server.).
Borodin teaches:
initiate execution of a new system (Col. 9, lines 5-9; “Running recovery 10 process may be initiated upon failure of a virtual machine (VM). Referring now also to FIG. 2, running recovery process 10 (via, e.g., backup agent 210) may emulate 100 the VM to be recovered (e.g., VM 202).”);
execute the new system while recovering a system stopped due to the error, to maintain continuity of processing (Col. 2, lines 16-19; “When executed by a processor, the instructions may cause the processor to perform operations for recovering a virtual machine while running the virtual machine from a backup archive.”, which explicitly discloses the recovery step occurring concurrently while the failover step is occurring. Col. 9 lines 5-6 discloses “Running recovery 10 process may be initiated upon failure of a virtual machine (VM).”, in which a person of ordinary skill in the art would recognize that a system error had occurred such that it caused the system to fail.).
Meduri, Bequet, Kammath, and Borodin are considered to be analogous to the claimed invention because they are in the same field of resource monitoring. Therefore, it would have been obvious to someone of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified Meduri in view of Bequet, further in view of Kammath to incorporate the teachings of Borodin and have executed a new system while recovering a system stopped due to an error to maintain continuity of processing. A person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention would have recognized execution of a backup system while deploying recovery procedures to be a known method in the art of error recovery due to interruptions in processing operations and increased system downtime, whose implementation would yield the predictable result of allowing processing to continue while the stopped system is being recovered. Further, a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention would have recognized that error recovery procedures are a known method in the art whose implementation could be extended to a variety of different systems, and would be applicable to the docker images as taught by Meduri, yielding the predictable result of allowing docker images to be deployed and allowing continuous processing of docker images through potential errors. A person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention would have recognized that initiating execution of a new system to be a known concept in the art because initiating replacement systems provides an alternative processing environment when continued execution of the original system is undesirable or unavailable, yielding the predictable result of providing a system capable of commencing operation in place of the existing system. Further, initiating execution of the new system on the data collection server of Meduri in response to an error-triggered condition would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention as error detection provides an indicator of whether the existing system is capable of continuing to perform operations, yielding the predictable result of automatically initiating failover procedures on error detection.
Regarding claim 9, Meduri in view of Bequet, further in view of Kammath, further in view of Borodin teach the system of claim 1. Meduri teaches:
the data collection server (Col. 7, lines 36-47; “event applier service 116 provisions one or more worker systems that can process the state change information 114. A worker system may be a software container, host, server, process, or application that is configured to obtain state change information for a particular container, a set of containers, or corresponding to a particular customer or delivery method. For instance, the event applier service 116 may provision a worker system and provide the worker system with a task definition for processing a portion of the state change information 114 obtained from the transaction journal 112.”, worker system, which may be a server, corresponds to the data collection server.).
Bequet teaches:
a docker image (Paragraph 93; “dynamic allocation of containers providing a dynamically alterable quantity of semi-separated execution environments has become a more widely favored approach to addressing this challenge. Particular examples of resource allocation software include, and are not limited to, Docker...”);
Borodin teaches:
recover a system stopped due to the error concurrently with execution of the new system such that continuity of processing is maintained (Col. 2, lines 16-19; “When executed by a processor, the instructions may cause the processor to perform operations for recovering a virtual machine while running the virtual machine from a backup archive.”, Col. 9 lines 5-6 discloses “Running recovery 10 process may be initiated upon failure of a virtual machine (VM).”, in which a person of ordinary skill in the art would recognize that a system error had occurred such that it caused the system to fail.).
It would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have combined the teachings of Meduri, Bequet, Kammath, and Borodin, to have utilized the data collection server of Meduri and implement an failover framework as taught by Borodin on docker images taught by Bequet utilized to implement the data collection of Meduri such that continuity of data collection is maintained. A person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention would have recognized execution of a backup system while deploying recovery procedures to be a known method in the art of error recovery due to interruptions in processing operations and increased system downtime, whose implementation would yield the predictable result of allowing processing to continue while the stopped system is being recovered. Further, a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention would have recognized that error recovery procedures are a known method in the art whose implementation could be extended to a variety of different systems, and would be applicable to the docker images as taught by Meduri, yielding the predictable result of allowing docker images to be deployed and allowing continuous processing of applications on docker images through potential errors, thereby allowing maintained continued processing through potential errors.
Claim 3 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Meduri in view of Bequet, further in view of Kammath, further in view of Borodin, further in view of Thielke et al. (US 11733427 B1) hereafter Thielke.
Regarding claim 3, Meduri in view of Bequet, further in view of Kammath, further in view of Borodin teach the system of claim 1. Meduri teaches:
wherein the data collection server is configured to collect structured data and store the structured data in a database (Col. 7, lines 36-47; “In an embodiment, the event applier service 116 provisions one or more worker systems that can process the state change information 114. A worker system may be a software container, host, server, process, or application that is configured to obtain state change information for a particular container, a set of containers, or corresponding to a particular customer or delivery method. For instance, the event applier service 116 may provision a worker system and provide the worker system with a task definition for processing a portion of the state change information 114 obtained from the transaction journal 112.”, where the worker system corresponds to the data collection server that collects information to be stored in a data store as evidenced in Col. 21, lines 4-11; “Based at least in part on this task definition, the worker system 412 may transmit its event data to the computing resource monitoring service 414, which may store the event data in its own datastore.” Structured data is evidenced by Col. 28, lines 54-59; “The server(s) may also include database servers, including without limitation those commercially available from Oracle®, Microsoft®, Sybase and IBM® as well as open-source servers such as MySQL, Postgres, SQLite, MongoDB, and any other server capable of storing, retrieving, and accessing structured or unstructured data.”).
Bequet teaches:
periodic data collection (Paragraph 308; “Primary control node 402 may, for example, transmit one or more communications to backup control nodes 404 and 406 (and, for example, to other control or worker nodes within the communications grid). Such communications may sent periodically, at fixed time intervals”);
using a REST API (Paragraph 456; “Such a website may be configured for interaction with other devices via an implementation of representational state transfer (REST or RESTful) application programming interface (API).”);
using a docker container (Paragraph 93; “dynamic allocation of containers providing a dynamically alterable quantity of semi-separated execution environments has become a more widely favored approach to addressing this challenge. Particular examples of resource allocation software include, and are not limited to, Docker...”).
Meduri in view of Bequet, further in view of Kammath, further in view of Borodin does not teach that the data is generated from a renewable energy generation complex.
However, Thielke teaches:
data is generated from a renewable energy generation complex (Col. 12, line 63 – Col. 13, line 3; “historical power generation data is received. The power generation data may be formatted, cleaned, or otherwise preprocessed for input to an algorithm. With respect to wind farms, this data may include wind turbine data, e.g., wind turbine locations, turbine performance data, turbine age, turbine specifications (e.g., capacity, hub height, rotor diameter, total height, manufacturer and model, etc.), etc.”, where the wind turbine that generates power generation data to be sent to the system corresponds to data being generated from a renewable energy generation complex.).
Meduri, Bequet, Kammath, Borodin, and Thielke are considered to be analogous to the claimed invention because they are in the same field of structured and unstructured data processing. Therefore, it would have been obvious to someone of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified Meduri in view of Bequet, further in view of Kammath, further in view of Borodin to incorporate the teachings of Thielke and have the data be generated from a renewable energy generation complex. A person of ordinary skill in the art would have recognized that collecting and processing data from industrial systems such as a renewable energy generation complex is a known application of data collection frameworks yielding the predictable result of enabling monitoring, analysis, and control of such systems.
Claim 5 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Meduri in view of Bequet, further in view of Kammath, further in view of Borodin, further in view of Vijayalakshmi et al. (US 20210004358 A1), further in view of Krasser et al. (US 20180197089 A1) hereafter Krasser.
Regarding claim 5, Meduri in view of Bequet, further in view of Kammath, further in view of Borodin teach the system of claim 4. Meduri teaches:
an external server configured to work with unstructured data (Col. 8, lines 48-61; “computing resource monitoring service may include a front-end server, which may be configured to obtain measurements, in the form of event data 118, from a variety of different sources... In response to a request from the customer 102 to obtain event data 118 for its one or more containers 110, the front-end server of the computing resource monitoring service 120 may access its datastore of event data to identify any event data obtained from the event applier service 116 that can be provided to the customer 102 to fulfill its request”, where the front end server corresponds to the server external to the system that provides data. Col. 28 lines 54-59 confirm that this data may be either structured or unstructured data, “server(s) may also include database servers, including without limitation those commercially available from Oracle®, Microsoft®, Sybase and IBM® as well as open-source servers such as MySQL, Postgres, SQLite, MongoDB, and any other server capable of storing, retrieving, and accessing structured or unstructured data”).
Meduri in view of Bequet, further in view of Kammath, further in view of Borodin does not teach converting data into a general-purpose execution file by using a cx_Freeze library.
However, Vijayalakshmi teaches:
converting data into a general-purpose execution file (Paragraph 57; “converting the one or more structured data of the plurality of file format after analysis to the executable structured data output in real time includes converting the one or more structured data of the plurality of file format after analysis to the executable structured data output in real time by the data analyzing module”).
Meduri, Bequet, Kammath, Borodin, and Vijayalakshmi are considered to be analogous to the claimed invention because they are in the same field of data processing. Therefore, it would have been obvious to someone of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified Meduri in view of Bequet, further in view of Kammath, further in view of Borodin to incorporate the teachings of Vijayalakshmi and have substituted the unstructured data of Meduri for the structured data teachings of Vijayalakshmi, as both are known forms of data representation whose substitution would yield the predictable result of enabling the system to process different types of data utilizing known data processing techniques. Further, it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art to have converted data into a general purpose execution file as generating deployable artifacts from data is a known method whose implementation would yield the predictable result of enabling execution on other systems.
Meduri in view of Bequet, further in view of Kammath, further in view of Borodin, further in view of Vijayalakshmi does not teach a cx_Freeze library.
However, Krasser teaches:
a cx_Freeze library (Table 3; the table explicitly shows cx_Freeze is a known script packager.).
Meduri, Bequet, Kammath, Borodin, Vijayalakshmi, and Krasser are considered to be analogous to the claimed invention because they are in the same field of data processing. Therefore, it would have been obvious to someone of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified Meduri in view of Bequet, further in view of Kammath, further in view of Borodin, further in view of Vijayalakshmi to incorporate the teachings of Krasser and have utilized a cx_Freeze library for converting data into a general purpose execution file. A person of ordinary skill in the art would have recognized from the Krasser Table 3 disclosure that the cx_Freeze library is a known tool for generating executable files from program content and the utilization of a known tool for its intended purpose would yield the predictable result of producing an executable file.
Claim 8 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Meduri in view of Bequet, further in view of Kammath, further in view of Borodin, further in view of Vijayalakshmi, further in view of Krasser.
Regarding claim 8, Meduri in view of Bequet, further in view of Kammath, further in view of Borodin teaches the method of claim 6. Meduri teaches:
requesting unstructured data from the external server at a predetermined time (Col. 8, lines 48-61; “computing resource monitoring service may include a front-end server, which may be configured to obtain measurements, in the form of event data 118, from a variety of different sources... In response to a request from the customer 102 to obtain event data 118 for its one or more containers 110, the front-end server of the computing resource monitoring service 120 may access its datastore of event data to identify any event data obtained from the event applier service 116 that can be provided to the customer 102 to fulfill its request”, where the front end server corresponds to the server external to the system, the customer servers, that provides data. Col. 28 lines 54-59 confirm that this data may be either structured or unstructured data, “server(s) may also include database servers, including without limitation those commercially available from Oracle®, Microsoft®, Sybase and IBM® as well as open-source servers such as MySQL, Postgres, SQLite, MongoDB, and any other server capable of storing, retrieving, and accessing structured or unstructured data”);
and storing the unstructured data provided by the external server in a file transfer protocol (FTP) (Col. 7, lines 36-47; “event applier service 116 provisions one or more worker systems that can process the state change information 114. A worker system may be a software container, host, server, process, or application that is configured to obtain state change information for a particular container, a set of containers, or corresponding to a particular customer or delivery method. For instance, the event applier service 116 may provision a worker system and provide the worker system with a task definition for processing a portion of the state change information 114 obtained from the transaction journal 112”, the worker system may be a server, corresponding to the data collection server, which sends the data for storage, where the protocol used may be FTP, as evidenced by Col. 28, lines 17-24; “Various embodiments of the present disclosure utilize at least one network that would be familiar to those skilled in the art for supporting communications using any of a variety of commercially-available protocols, such as... File Transfer Protocol (“FTP”)”. The provided data may be unstructured data, as evidenced by Col. 28, lines 54-59; “The server(s) may also include database servers, including without limitation those commercially available from Oracle®, Microsoft®, Sybase and IBM® as well as open-source servers such as MySQL, Postgres, SQLite, MongoDB, and any other server capable of storing, retrieving, and accessing structured or unstructured data.”);
wherein the external server transmits the unstructured data (Col. 8, lines 48-61; “computing resource monitoring service may include a front-end server, which may be configured to obtain measurements, in the form of event data 118, from a variety of different sources... In response to a request from the customer 102 to obtain event data 118 for its one or more containers 110, the front-end server of the computing resource monitoring service 120 may access its datastore of event data to identify any event data obtained from the event applier service 116 that can be provided to the customer 102 to fulfill its request”, where the front end server corresponds to the server external to the system that provides data. In order for the data to be provided from an external server to another server, the external server must transmit the data. Col. 28 lines 54-59 confirm that this data may be either structured or unstructured data, “server(s) may also include database servers, including without limitation those commercially available from Oracle®, Microsoft®, Sybase and IBM® as well as open-source servers such as MySQL, Postgres, SQLite, MongoDB, and any other server capable of storing, retrieving, and accessing structured or unstructured data”).
Meduri in view of Bequet, further in view of Kammath, further in view of Borodin does not teach converting the unstructured data into a general-purpose execution file by using a cx_Freeze library.
However, Vijayalakshmi teaches:
converting data into a general-purpose execution file (Paragraph 57; “converting the one or more structured data of the plurality of file format after analysis to the executable structured data output in real time includes converting the one or more structured data of the plurality of file format after analysis to the executable structured data output in real time by the data analyzing module”).
Meduri, Bequet, Kammath, Borodin, and Vijayalakshmi are considered to be analogous to the claimed invention because they are in the same field of data processing. Therefore, it would have been obvious to someone of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified Meduri in view of Bequet, further in view of Kammath, further in view of Borodin to incorporate the teachings of Vijayalakshmi and have substituted the unstructured data of Meduri for the structured data teachings of Vijayalakshmi, as both are known forms of data representation whose substitution would yield the predictable result of enabling the system to process different types of data utilizing known data processing techniques. Further, it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art to have converted data into a general purpose execution file as generating deployable artifacts from data is a known method whose implementation would yield the predictable result of enabling execution on other systems.
Meduri in view of Bequet, further in view of Kammath, further in view of Borodin, further in view of Vijayalakshmi does not teach a cx_Freeze library.
However, Krasser teaches:
a cx_Freeze library (Table 3; the table explicitly shows cx_Freeze is a known script packager.).
Meduri, Bequet, Kammath, Borodin, Vijayalakshmi, and Krasser are considered to be analogous to the claimed invention because they are in the same field of data processing. Therefore, it would have been obvious to someone of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified Meduri in view of Bequet, further in view of Kammath, further in view of Borodin, further in view of Vijayalakshmi to incorporate the teachings of Krasser and have utilized a cx_Freeze library for converting data into a general purpose execution file. A person of ordinary skill in the art would have recognized from the Krasser Table 3 disclosure that the cx_Freeze library is a known tool for generating executable files from program content and the utilization of a known tool for its intended purpose would yield the predictable result of producing an executable file.
Claim 10 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Meduri in view of Bequet, further in view of Kammath, further in view of Borodin, further in view of Pabon et al. (US 20230229567 A1) hereafter Pabon.
Regarding claim 10, Meduri in view of Bequet, further in view of Kammath, further in view of Borodin teach the system of claim 1. Meduri teaches:
The database (Col. 8, lines 48-61; “computing resource monitoring service may include a front-end server, which may be configured to obtain measurements, in the form of event data 118, from a variety of different sources... In response to a request from the customer 102 to obtain event data 118 for its one or more containers 110, the front-end server of the computing resource monitoring service 120 may access its datastore of event data to identify any event data obtained from the event applier service 116 that can be provided to the customer 102 to fulfill its request”, and Col. 28 lines 54-59; “server(s) may also include database servers, including without limitation those commercially available from Oracle®, Microsoft®, Sybase and IBM® as well as open-source servers such as MySQL, Postgres, SQLite, MongoDB, and any other server capable of storing, retrieving, and accessing structured or unstructured data”).
Bequet teaches:
a docker container (Paragraph 93; “dynamic allocation of containers providing a dynamically alterable quantity of semi-separated execution environments has become a more widely favored approach to addressing this challenge. Particular examples of resource allocation software include, and are not limited to, Docker...”).
A person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention would have found implementing the docker image in a docker container to be a known concept in the art because docker is identified in Bequet as a resource allocation software for allocating containers providing semi-separated execution environments which are widely favored, identifying docker as one such example of container software, whose implementation would yield the predictable result of executing the docker image within a docker container. Further, a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention would have found implementing the database of Meduri in a docker container to be a known concept in the art because containerized execution provides a semi-separated execution environment for software applications and databases (Bequet, Paragraph 93), whose implementation would yield the predictable result of providing the database in an semi-separated execution environment.
Meduri in view of Bequet, further in view of Kammath, further in view of Borodin does not teach a duplicate container is maintained so that availability is improved.
However, Pabon teaches:
duplicates are maintained so that availability is improved (Paragraph 335; “a deployment configuration file may specify a replication factor of Z. Based on the replication factor of Z, the container orchestrator may deploy Z instances of the container image 1210 associated with the application among Z nodes 420.”).
Meduri, Bequet, Kammath, Borodin, and Pabon are considered to be analogous to the claimed invention because they are in the same field of container management. Therefore, it would have been obvious to someone of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified Meduri in view of Bequet, further in view of Kammath, further in view of Borodin to incorporate the teachings of Pabon and have implemented duplicate containers such that availability of the database is improved. A person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention would have found maintaining duplicate containers based on replicated container images to be a known concept in the art because replication across multiple nodes provides redundant copies that can be used when one becomes unavailable, whose implementation would yield the predictable result of maintaining duplicate container execution environments. A person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention would have recognized that redundant instances allow processing to continue when one node becomes unavailable, redundancy being a known method in computing paradigms, whose implementation would naturally yield the predictable result of improved availability of the database disclosed by Meduri.
Response to Arguments
Applicant's arguments filed 06/02/2026 have been fully considered. Applicant’s arguments are summarized below:
The prior art of record fails to teach or suggest the amended limitations of claims 1 and 6.
Dependent claims are submitted as allowable for at least the above reasons.
Examiner’s response:
The Examiner agrees that the prior art of record fails to teach or suggest the amended limitations of claims 1 and 6. Accordingly, the rejections under 35 U.S.C. 103 for claims 1 and 6 are withdrawn. However, upon further consideration, a new ground(s) of rejection is made in view of Meduri, Bequet, Kammath, and Borodin under 35 U.S.C. 103. In particular, Meduri is relied upon for the monitoring service that detects occurrences of errors while collecting structured data and generating a trigger in response, Kammath is relied upon for the distinct centralized monitoring server separate from the other system components, of which the combination yields the claimed “monitoring server distinct from the data collection server and external server”, which a person of ordinary skill in the art would recognize as needing to be “in communication with the data collection server” motivated by the need to monitor status of servers across the system.
Independent claims 1 and 6 remain rejected for the reasons stated above. Therefore, contrary to Applicant's arguments, because the dependent claims depend from an unpatentable claim and does not add limitations that overcome the rejection, it likewise remains rejected.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure. Zhang et al. (US 20220197697 A1) discloses steps of error detection and restart procedures while performing task processing.
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.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to KENNETH P TRAN whose telephone number is (571)272-6926. The examiner can normally be reached M-TH 4:30 a.m. - 12:30 p.m. PT, F 4:30 a.m. - 8:30 a.m. PT, or at Kenneth.Tran@uspto.gov.
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/KENNETH P TRAN/ Examiner, Art Unit 2196
/APRIL Y BLAIR/ Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2196