DETAILED ACTION
This action is in response to an amendment filed on January 5, 2026 for the application of Shilane et al., for a “Core file generation and processing for cluster file system serviceability” filed on January 19, 2024. The present application, filed on or after March 16, 2013, is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA .
Claims 1-20 are pending in the application.
Claims 1-20 are rejected under 35 USC § 103.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
In the event the determination of the status of the application as subject to AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103 (or as subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103) is incorrect, any correction of the statutory basis for the rejection will not be considered a new ground of rejection if the prior art relied upon, and the rationale supporting the rejection, would be the same under either status.
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 103 which forms the basis for all obviousness rejections set forth in this Office action:
A patent for a claimed invention may not be obtained, notwithstanding that the claimed invention is not identically disclosed as set forth in section 102 of this title, if the differences between the claimed invention and the prior art are such that the claimed invention as a whole would have been obvious before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to a person having ordinary skill in the art to which the claimed invention pertains. Patentability shall not be negated by the manner in which the invention was made.
The factual inquiries set forth in Graham v. John Deere Co., 383 U.S. 1, 148 USPQ 459 (1966), that are applied for establishing a background for determining obviousness under 35 U.S.C. 103 are summarized as follows:
1. Determining the scope and contents of the prior art.
2. Ascertaining the differences between the prior art and the claims at issue.
3. Resolving the level of ordinary skill in the pertinent art.
4. Considering objective evidence present in the application indicating obviousness or nonobviousness.
Claims 1-4, 7, and 9-10 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Alexander (U.S. PGPUB 20210157710) in view of Mathew et al. (U.S. PGPUB 20230342222).
As per claim 1, Alexander discloses a method of facilitating the debugging of problems in a cluster system operated by a user ([0038], “cloud service 120 may be subject to analysis and debugging in the event of a failure.”) and having a plurality of nodes executing containerized applications ([0038], “Cloud service 120 may employ a cluster, a pod, or a collection of containers to carry out the processing of a transaction.”), comprising:
capturing, by a hardware component of the cluster system, a memory state of each node at a time of a problem in the system ([0042]-[0045]);
embodying the captured memory state as a respective core file ([0048]) for each node ([0064] and [0075]);
formatting each core file in a uniform format ([0076]-[0080]);
storing each core file in a dedicated directory in a memory store ([0080], “FileLogger: directory (e.g., the directory to store the dive information)”); and
collecting respective core files of the plurality of nodes using a persistent volume ([0031], “When problems or errors are during the processing of a transaction by the server-side application, the system may persist the transaction stack that caused the error in a persistent store”) (PV) mounter pod ([0075]) for transfer to a debugging process ([0042]-[0043], “one or more electronic devices 185 (e.g., client devices) may access transaction log 165 to perform debugging and evaluation of processed transactions 175 that are subject to an error.”) and ([0078], “A console logger may be used primarily during prototyping and debugging. The dive information may be sent as a system.out file.”).
Alexander fails to explicitly disclose backup applications.
Mathew of analogous at teaches to facilitate serviceability of backup applications in the cluster system ([0021], “data backup management application” and [0032]).
All of the claimed elements were known in Alexander and Mathew and could have been combined by known methods with no change in their respective functions. It therefore would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the time of effective filing language to combine their methods. One would be motivated to make this combination for the purpose of providing an improved performance of applications in a cluster system (Mathew, [0035]).
As per claim 2, Alexander discloses the core file is automatically generated upon a crash of a pod ([0030]) or node in the cluster system, or upon user command ([0031], “When problems or errors are during the processing of a transaction by the server-side application, the system may persist the transaction stack that caused the error in a persistent store”).
As per claim 3, Mathew discloses compressing the core file using a defined compression algorithm ([0029]).
As per claim 4, Mathew discloses the uniform format comprises at least a pod name, an identifier, and a timestamp in accordance with the compression algorithm ([0029]-[0031]).
As per claim 7, Alexander discloses the memory state for each core file comprises system statistics, system information, and logs for each node ([0042]-[0045]).
As per claim 9, Mathew discloses the cluster system comprises a Santorini filesystem network ([0033], “Santorini Distributed file system”) processing containerized data utilizing a Kubernetes-based framework ([0029] and [0031]), and further comprises part of a deduplication backup system performing backup and restore operations for the plurality of nodes ([0032], “deduplication backup system”), and further wherein each node of the cluster executes the applications from respective pods in a corresponding cluster ([0031]-[0033]).
As per claim 10, Mathew discloses the containerized applications comprise at least one of a Data Domain container running deduplication ([0029], “Data Domain File System (DDFS) is an inline data deduplication file system”) and compression processes ([0029]), a cloud-native data protection manager, and a scalable object storage manager ([0020]-[0022]).
Claims 5-6 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Alexander (U.S. PGPUB 20210157710) in view of Mathew et al. (U.S. PGPUB 20230342222) and in further view of Kumar et al. (U.S. PGPUB 20230236953).
As per claim 5, Alexander in view of Mathew fails to explicitly disclose deleting expired files.
Kumar of analogous art teaches allocating a defined fixed amount of memory in the cluster system to store the core files; and deleting at least some of the core files as expired core files at a defined periodic basis ([0018], “The method facilitates the storage of debugging logs throughout an operation (e.g., a backup operation). At predetermined points the logs are stored to a cache. Older and/or unnecessary logs are periodically deleted from the cache to ensure that the cache does not grow to be larger than a predetermined size.”).
All of the claimed elements were known in Alexander and Kumar and could have been combined by known methods with no change in their respective functions. It therefore would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the time of effective filing language to combine their methods. One would be motivated to make this combination to improve storage space management (Kumar, [0003]).
As per claim 6, Alexander discloses using a coredump helper service ([0048], “dump”) to rename and process the core files ([0080]-[0095]).
Claim 8 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Alexander (U.S. PGPUB 20210157710) in view of Mathew et al. (U.S. PGPUB 20230342222) and Ippatapu (U.S. PGPUB 20200356292) and in further view of Kelly (U.S. Patent No. 10592418).
As per claim 8, Alexander discloses the logs comprise information related to at least one of: component availability state changes ([0031]), component failures and errors ([0042] and [0058]), configuration changes, changes to source code in production, or configuration changes in a production system. Alexander in view of Mathew fails to explicitly disclose read/write latencies, read/write throughputs, replication throughput, and garbage collection performance.
Ippatapu of analogous art teaches the system statistics comprise performance and activity data for applications executed by the nodes, including read/write latencies ([0049]), read/write throughputs ([0084], “Performance data collected may include a number of I/O operations/unit of time such as I/O throughput from the back-end/DA perspective, and the like”), replication throughput ([0098] and [0101]), and garbage collection performance ([0101], “the performance data measured/collected includes garbage collection time”).
All of the claimed elements were known in Alexander and Ippatapu and could have been combined by known methods with no change in their respective functions. It therefore would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the time of effective filing language to combine their methods. One would be motivated to make this combination since Ippatapu’s system statistics is a mere example of Alexander’s diagnostic information.
Alexander in view of Mathew fails to explicitly disclose remaining storage capacity.
Kelly of analogous art teaches the system information comprises total storage capacity, currently utilized storage capacity, and remaining storage capacity (col. 8, lines 49-54, “a difference between the total application memory space (such as 32 GB) and the peak application memory usage”).
All of the claimed elements were known in Alexander and Kelly and could have been combined by known methods with no change in their respective functions. It therefore would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the time of effective filing language to combine their methods. One would be motivated to make this combination since Kelly’s memory usage is a mere example of Alexander’s diagnostic information.
Claims 11 and 18 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Alexander (U.S. PGPUB 20210157710) in view of Mathew et al. (U.S. PGPUB 20230342222) and in further view of Abogado et al. (U.S. Patent No. 11709760).
As per claims 11 and 18, Alexander discloses a method of analyzing problems in a cluster system provided by a vendor and operated by a user ([0038], “cloud service 120 may be subject to analysis and debugging in the event of a failure.”), and having a plurality of nodes executing containerized applications ([0038], “Cloud service 120 may employ a cluster, a pod, or a collection of containers to carry out the processing of a transaction.”), comprising:
a hardware-based monitoring system operation to detect occurrence of an error condition for an application ([0031], “Each agent of the system may be a “sidecar” that sits alongside a cloud-based service that tracks not just container information, but information about the execution of the transaction. When problems or errors are during the processing of a transaction by the server-side application, the system may persist the transaction stack that caused the error in a persistent store. In addition, the system may notify other agents of the failure.”);
generating, upon detection of the error condition, a core file ([0048]) for each node ([0064] and [0075]) comprising a current memory state of a respective node, the current memory state comprising system statistics, system information, and logs for each node ([0042]-[0045]); and
a hardware-based component collecting core files for each node into collected data ([0031] and [0075]) to be transmitted for analysis and debugging ([0042]-[0043], “one or more electronic devices 185 (e.g., client devices) may access transaction log 165 to perform debugging and evaluation of processed transactions 175 that are subject to an error.”) and ([0078], “A console logger may be used primarily during prototyping and debugging. The dive information may be sent as a system.out file.”)
Alexander fails to explicitly disclose backup applications.
Mathew of analogous at teaches to facilitate serviceability of backup applications in the cluster system ([0021], “data backup management application” and [0032]).
All of the claimed elements were known in Alexander and Mathew and could have been combined by known methods with no change in their respective functions. It therefore would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the time of effective filing language to combine their methods. One would be motivated to make this combination for the purpose of providing an improved performance of applications in a cluster system (Mathew, [0035]).
Alexander in view of Mathew fails to explicitly disclose collected data to be transmitted to the vendor for analysis and debugging.
Abogado of analogous art teaches a cluster system provided by a vendor (Fig. 1), collecting core files for each node into collected data to be transmitted to the vendor for analysis and debugging (col. 8, lines 12-15, “The automated diagnostic application 120 may send the diagnostic log 166 to the vendor who produced one or more components of gateway 112.”).
All of the claimed elements were known in Alexander and Abogado and could have been combined by known methods with no change in their respective functions. It therefore would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the time of effective filing language to combine their methods. One would be motivated to make this combination to improve analysis and debugging of errors (Abogado, col. 3, lines 56-67).
As per claim 12, Mathew discloses the cluster system comprises a Santorini filesystem network ([0033], “Santorini Distributed file system”) processing containerized data utilizing a Kubernetes-based framework ([0029] and [0031]), and further comprises part of a deduplication backup system performing backup and restore operations for the nodes ([0032], “deduplication backup system”) and further wherein applications comprise at least one of a Data Domain service running deduplication ([0029], “Data Domain File System (DDFS) is an inline data deduplication file system”) and compression processes ([0029]), a cloud-native data protection manager, and a scalable object storage manager ([0020]-[0022]), and further wherein each node of the cluster executes the applications from respective pods in a corresponding cluster ([0029]-[0032]).
Claims 13-15 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Alexander (U.S. PGPUB 20210157710) in view of Mathew et al. (U.S. PGPUB 20230342222) and Abogado et al. (U.S. Patent No. 11709760) and Ippatapu (U.S. PGPUB 20200356292) and in further view of Kelly (U.S. Patent No. 10592418).
As per claim 13, Alexander discloses the logs comprise information related to at least one of: component availability state changes ([0031]), component failures and errors ([0042] and [0058]), configuration changes, changes to source code in production, or configuration changes in a production system. Alexander in view of Mathew fails to explicitly disclose read/write latencies, read/write throughputs, replication throughput, and garbage collection performance.
Ippatapu of analogous art teaches the system statistics comprise performance and activity data for applications executed by the nodes, including read/write latencies ([0049]), read/write throughputs ([0084], “Performance data collected may include a number of I/O operations/unit of time such as I/O throughput from the back-end/DA perspective, and the like”), replication throughput ([0098] and [0101]), and garbage collection performance ([0101], “the performance data measured/collected includes garbage collection time”).
All of the claimed elements were known in Alexander and Ippatapu and could have been combined by known methods with no change in their respective functions. It therefore would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the time of effective filing language to combine their methods. One would be motivated to make this combination since Ippatapu’s system statistics is a mere example of Alexander’s diagnostic information.
Alexander in view of Mathew fails to explicitly disclose remaining storage capacity.
Kelly of analogous art teaches the system information comprises total storage capacity, currently utilized storage capacity, and remaining storage capacity (col. 8, lines 49-54, “a difference between the total application memory space (such as 32 GB) and the peak application memory usage”).
All of the claimed elements were known in Alexander and Kelly and could have been combined by known methods with no change in their respective functions. It therefore would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the time of effective filing language to combine their methods. One would be motivated to make this combination since Kelly’s memory usage is a mere example of Alexander’s diagnostic information.
As per claim 14, Mathew discloses compressing the core file using a defined compression algorithm ([0029]).
As per claim 15, Mathew discloses the uniform format comprises at least a pod name, an identifier, and a timestamp in accordance with the compression algorithm ([0029]-[0031]).
Claims 16-17 and 20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Alexander (U.S. PGPUB 20210157710) in view of Mathew et al. (U.S. PGPUB 20230342222) and Abogado et al. (U.S. Patent No. 11709760) and in further view of Kumar et al. (U.S. PGPUB 20230236953).
As per claims 16 and 20, Alexander in view of Mathew fails to explicitly disclose deleting expired files.
Kumar of analogous art teaches allocating a defined fixed amount of memory in the cluster system to store the core files; and deleting at least some of the core files as expired core files at a defined periodic basis ([0018], “The method facilitates the storage of debugging logs throughout an operation (e.g., a backup operation). At predetermined points the logs are stored to a cache. Older and/or unnecessary logs are periodically deleted from the cache to ensure that the cache does not grow to be larger than a predetermined size.”).
All of the claimed elements were known in Alexander and Kumar and could have been combined by known methods with no change in their respective functions. It therefore would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the time of effective filing language to combine their methods. One would be motivated to make this combination to improve storage space management (Kumar, [0003]).
As per claim 17, Alexander discloses using a coredump helper service ([0048], “dump”) to rename and process the core files ([0080]-[0095]).
Claim 19 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Alexander (U.S. PGPUB 20210157710) in view of Mathew et al. (U.S. PGPUB 20230342222) and Abogado et al. (U.S. Patent No. 11709760) and Ippatapu (U.S. PGPUB 20200356292) and in further view of Kelly (U.S. Patent No. 10592418).
As per claim 19, Alexander discloses the logs comprise information related to at least one of: component availability state changes ([0031]), component failures and errors ([0042] and [0058]), configuration changes, changes to source code in production, or configuration changes in a production system.
Mathew discloses the cluster system comprises a Santorini filesystem network ([0033], “Santorini Distributed file system”) processing containerized data utilizing a Kubernetes-based framework ([0029] and [0031]), and comprises part of a deduplication backup system performing backup and restore operations for the nodes ([0032], “deduplication backup system”), and further wherein applications comprise at least one of a Data Domain service running deduplication ([0029], “Data Domain File System (DDFS) is an inline data deduplication file system”) and compression processes ([0029]), a cloud-native data protection manager, and a scalable object storage manager ([0020]-[0022]), and further wherein each node of the cluster executes the applications from respective pods in a corresponding cluster ([0029]-[0032]).
Alexander in view of Mathew fails to explicitly disclose read/write latencies, read/write throughputs, replication throughput, and garbage collection performance.
Ippatapu of analogous art teaches the system statistics comprise performance and activity data for applications executed by the nodes, including read/write latencies ([0049]), read/write throughputs ([0084], “Performance data collected may include a number of I/O operations/unit of time such as I/O throughput from the back-end/DA perspective, and the like”), replication throughput ([0098] and [0101]), and garbage collection performance ([0101], “the performance data measured/collected includes garbage collection time”).
All of the claimed elements were known in Alexander and Ippatapu and could have been combined by known methods with no change in their respective functions. It therefore would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the time of effective filing language to combine their methods. One would be motivated to make this combination since Ippatapu’s system statistics is a mere example of Alexander’s diagnostic information.
Alexander in view of Mathew fails to explicitly disclose remaining storage capacity.
Kelly of analogous art teaches the system information comprises total storage capacity, currently utilized storage capacity, and remaining storage capacity (col. 8, lines 49-54, “a difference between the total application memory space (such as 32 GB) and the peak application memory usage”).
All of the claimed elements were known in Alexander and Kelly and could have been combined by known methods with no change in their respective functions. It therefore would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the time of effective filing language to combine their methods. One would be motivated to make this combination since Kelly’s memory usage is a mere example of Alexander’s diagnostic information.
Response to Arguments
Applicant’s amendments filed on January 5, 2026 necessitated a new ground(s) of rejection in this Office action. Accordingly, Applicant’s arguments have been fully considered but are moot in view of the new ground(s) of 35 U.S.C. 103 rejection, as set forth in this office action.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to Elmira Mehrmanesh whose telephone number is (571)272-5531. The examiner can normally be reached on M-F from 10-6.
If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Bryce Bonzo, can be reached at telephone number (571) 272-3655. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/Elmira Mehrmanesh/
Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2113