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 and 11 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 and 11, they recite “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, 4, 10, 12, 13, 19, and 20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Bahadure et al. (US 2013/0151802) in view of Olson et al. (US 2011/0047340).
With respect to claim 1, Bahadure discloses:
in response to the backup request: parsing a virtual disk associated with the VM to obtain data block information of VM data associated with the VM ([0052], [0055], where “accessed/scanned” corresponds to Applicant’s “parsing”);
performing, using data block information of the VM data, a used block analysis to identify a set of used blocks by the VM data ([0052], [0050], [0055], where “extents” are “used blocks”);
generating an updated data block information, wherein the updated data block information comprises the set of used blocks (id.);
generating the space-efficient backup of the VM using the updated data block information ([0053], “copied” corresponds to “generating”, Fig. 10 ‘1004” used blocks only); and
storing the space-efficient backup in a backup storage system (id.).
Bahadure does not specifically disclose: obtaining, by a backup agent, a backup request for a space-efficient backup of a VM.
However, Olson discloses: obtaining, by a backup agent, a backup request for a space-efficient backup of a VM ([0036], where the backup agent reads on Olson’s virtualization platform. Olson’s “snapshot” is interpreted to be a space efficient backup of a virtual machine).
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 Olson so that the volume snapshot to back up the virtual disk image file decreases the load on the virtualization server computer system since the virtual disk image file snapshot can be released sooner instead of maintaining the snapshot during the time when the backup is being performed ([0044] and [0043], Olson).
With respect to claim 3, Bahadure discloses: wherein the data block information specifies: a set of logical blocks in the virtual disk, and a file associated with each of the set of logical blocks, and wherein the used block analysis comprises: making a first determination, for a first logical block of the set of logical blocks, that the first logical block is associated with a file of a file system of the virtual disk; and based on the first determination, identifying the first logical block as a used block of the set of used blocks ([0052]-[0056]).
With respect to claim 4, Bahadure discloses: wherein the used block analysis further comprises: making a second determination, for a second logical block of the set of logical blocks, that the second logical block is not associated with any file of the file system; and based on the second determination, not including the second logical block as any of the set of used blocks ([0050], Fig. 10, only the used blocks are copied).
With respect to claims 10, 12, and 13, they recite similar limitations as claims 1, 3, and 4, and are, therefore, rejected under the same citations and rationale.
With respect to claims 19 and 20, they recite similar limitations as claims 1 and 3, and are, therefore, rejected under the same citations and rationale.
Claim(s) 2 and 11 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Bahadure et al. (US 2013/0151802) in view of Olson et al. (US 2011/0047340) further in view of Vemuri (US 9477508).
With respect to claim 2, Bahadure does not specifically disclose: wherein the VM data is a size larger than 200 gigabytes (GB).
However, Vemuri discloses: wherein the VM data 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 claim 11, it recites similar limitations as claim 2 and is therefore rejected under the same citations and rationale.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 5-9, 14-18 are objected to as being dependent upon a rejected base claim, but would be allowable if rewritten in independent form including all of the limitations of the base claim and any intervening claims. The following is a statement of reasons for the indication of allowable subject matter: The prior art, for example, Bahadure discloses:
in response to the backup request: parsing a virtual disk associated with the VM to obtain data block information of VM data associated with the VM ([0052], [0055], where “accessed/scanned” corresponds to Applicant’s “parsing”);
performing, using data block information of the VM data, a used block analysis to identify a set of used blocks by the VM data ([0052], [0050], [0055], where “extents” are “used blocks”);
generating an updated data block information, wherein the updated data block information comprises the set of used blocks (id.);
generating the space-efficient backup of the VM using the updated data block information ([0053], “copied” corresponds to “generating”, Fig. 10 ‘1004” used blocks only); and
storing the space-efficient backup in a backup storage system (id.).
and Olson discloses: obtaining, by a backup agent, a backup request for a space-efficient backup of a VM ([0036], where the backup agent reads on Olson’s virtualization platform. Olson’s “snapshot” is interpreted to be a space efficient backup of a virtual machine).
The prior art, alone or in combination, does not disclose storing the back up in storage as a set of backup slices, where one of those backup slices includes a portion of the set of used blocks (claims 5 and 14).
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure. Banerjee et al. (US 8881144): A computer-implemented method for reclaiming storage space from virtual machine disk images may include (1) identifying a virtual machine that uses a virtual machine disk image as a virtual disk for storage, the virtual machine disk image being stored on a thin-provisioned volume within a host file system, (2) determining that a portion of the virtual machine disk image represents a portion of the virtual disk that is unused by a file system of the virtual machine, (3) based on determining that the portion of the virtual machine disk image represents the portion of the virtual disk that is unused by the file system of the virtual machine, marking the portion of the virtual machine disk image for reclamation from the thin-provisioned volume, and (4) reclaiming the marked portion of the virtual machine disk image from the thin-provisioned volume..
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/WISSAM RASHID/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2195