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 .
Claims 1-20 are pending.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 112
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112(b):
(b) CONCLUSION.—The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor regards as the invention.
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph:
The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the applicant regards as his invention.
Claims 2, 9, and 16 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph, as being indefinite for failing to particularly point out and distinctly claim the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor (or for applications subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, the applicant), regards as the invention.
With respect to claims 2, 9, and 16, they recite the limitation “VM data that is a size larger than 200 gigabytes”. However, no upper limit is disclosed. The metes and bounds of the VM data size is, therefore, unclear.
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) 1,3, 8,10, 15, and 17 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Shu (US 2020/0210091) in view of Teli et al. (US 9354907).
With respect to claim 1, Shu discloses: obtaining, by a backup agent, a restoration request for a VM (Fig. 4 S410, the backup server corresponds to “backup agent”); in response to the restoration request (Fig. 4, S420-S460 executes in response to receiving the request):
identifying a set of backup slices associated with the VM (Fig. 4, S420, S450);
initiating a restoration of each of the set of backup slices to a production host, wherein the set of backup slices is stored in a backup storage system operatively connected to the production host (Fig. 4 S460);
generating, at the production host, a composite virtual disk associated with the VM and mapping VM data in the set of backup slices to the composite virtual disk ([0041]);
Shu does not specifically disclose: generating the VM to read from the composite virtual disk.
However, Teli discloses: generating the VM to read from the composite virtual disk (col. 5, lines 50-63).
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the invention to incorporate the teachings of Teli to reduce reading from the storage device when restoring backup data and thereby reduce communication load between the backup server/agent and the production host of Shu.
With respect to claim 3, Shu discloses: wherein the composite virtual disk comprises a set of logical slices each mapping to one of the set of backup slices ([0129]).
With respect to claim 4, Shu discloses: wherein a backup slice of the set of backup slices comprises a portion of the VM data associated with one of the set of logical slices and a VM backup metadata file (Abstract, [0008]).
With respect to claim 5, Shu discloses: wherein the set of backup slices is identified using the VM backup metadata file ([0009]).
With respect to claim 6, Shu discloses: wherein the VM backup metadata file comprises a set of attributes associated with the portion of the VM data ([0040]).
With respect to claim 7, Shu discloses: wherein one of the set of attributes is a storage location of a file of the VM data (id.).
With respect to claims 8,10-14, they recite similar limitations as claims 1, 3-7, respectively, and are therefore rejected under the same citations and rationale.
With respect to claims 15, 17-20, they recite similar limitations as claims 1, 3-7, respectively, and are therefore rejected under the same citations and rationale.
Claim(s) 2, 9, and 16 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Shu (US 2020/0210091) in view of Teli et al. (US 9354907) further in view of Vemuri (US 9477508).
With respect to claim 2, Shu and Teli do not specifically disclose: wherein the VM comprises VM data that is a size larger than 200 gigabytes (GB).
However, Vemuri discloses: wherein the VM comprises VM data that is a size larger than 200 gigabytes (GB) (col. 5, lines 50-line 22 of col. 6).
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the invention to incorporate the teachings of Vemuri to ensure virtual machines can benefit from the physical characteristics of a storage device by returning a storage capacity that is required by the virtual machine, e.g. 200 GB or 275 GB depending on the total capacity of the storage device thereby allowing the virtual machine to request capacity that matches its requirements, rather than strict allocation.
With respect to claims 9 and 16, they recite similar limitations as claim 2, and is therefore rejected under the same citations and rationale.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to WISSAM RASHID whose telephone number is (571)270-3758. The examiner can normally be reached Monday-Friday 8:00 am-5:00 pm.
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If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Aimee Li can be reached at (571)272-4169. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/WISSAM RASHID/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2195