DETAILED ACTION
This office action is in response to application filed on 10/11/2023.
Claims 1 – 12 are pending.
Priority is claimed to Japanese application JP2022-202555 (filed on 12/19/2022).
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 .
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 – 5, 7 – 9, 11 and 12 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Yang et al (US 20220179709, hereinafter Yang), in view of James et al (US 20140317265, hereinafter James).
As per claim 1, Yang discloses:
A non-transitory computer-readable recording medium storing a resource management program for causing a computer that manages a virtualization system to execute a process (Yang [0041]: CRM), the process comprising:
obtaining a first score according to a time-series number of unused resources for each resource type in the virtualization system, based on a use history of resources in the virtualization system by a user; (Yang [0054]: “both the amount of the resources unused by the first job during each time window of the at least one backfill and duration of each time window of the at least one backfill satisfy predefined requirements… Suppose that in the predefined requirements, number of CPUs unused by the job is greater than or equal to 4 and duration of the time window is greater than or equal to 5 time units. It can be found that number of CPUs unused by the job in the Block B is 5 (which is greater than 4) and duration of time window in the Block B is 7 time units (which is greater than 5 time units), the block B therefore can be determined to be the backfill B. However the Block C is not a backfill since the duration of the time window is 2 time units (which is not greater than 5 time units).”; [0055]: “Jobs in a same type may share same or similar diagram and backfill(s). So, data of historical jobs can be used to get a job classifier using existing methods such as statistical classification method, artificial neural network method by selecting suitable feature from data of jobs.”; [0061]: “receive jobs from users”. Examiner notes that the whether or not a block is a backfill window is mapped to the claimed “first score”.)
and allocating each resource to the user in ascending order of a total value of the first score and the second score. (Yang [0079]: “the job scheduler may search a second job in waiting jobs to be allocated resources, the second job being suitable to be allocated resources unused by the first job from the maximum amount of resources allocated to the first job during the at least one backfill… the maximum amount of resources required by the second job is less than or equal to the amount of resources unused by the first job during a time window of the at least one backfill.”; [0080]: “the job scheduler may allocate resources unused by the first job from the maximum amount of resources allocated to the first job to the second job in response to the first job running to the at least one backfill (maybe at any time point of a/each time window of the at least one backfill).”. Examiner notes that whether the backfill window has enough resource for the backfill job is mapped to the claimed “second score”. Examiner notes that in the scenario of only 1 resource is used, the claimed allocating each resource… in ascending order of total value is irrelevant.)
Yang did not explicitly disclose:
obtaining, for each resource, a second score according to a use frequency and compatibility with another resource;
However, James teaches:
obtaining, for each resource, a second score according to a use frequency and compatibility with another resource; (James [0045]: “node management layers 102 may query the candidate nodes to determine whether each candidate node is able to help with the particular VM. Candidate nodes may calculate a best fit value for the candidate node to help with the particular VM and return the best fit value. In one example, the best fit value may represent a value representative of the risk, as assessed by the node, of the node taking an additional workload and meeting performance requirements in one or more policies. Node management layers 102 select, from among the candidate nodes returning a best fit value, a best fit node, and move the particular VM to the best fit node.”; [0064]: “cluster balancing service 242 may select at least one candidate node by checking whether there are any nodes reporting availability to help with load balancing per help status list 246 and further filter candidate node selections based on policies 248 and utilization logs 250. Utilization logs 238 and utilization logs 250 may include short term historical data including, but not limited to, peaks, valleys, frequencies, averages, trending, and current data for use in optimizing resource use. In addition, utilization logs 250 may include longer term time and date dependent patterns determined by cluster balancing service 242 to predict future resource contention and optimize workload combinations for initial placement.”)
It would have been obvious for one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to incorporate the teaching of James into that of Yang in order to obtain a second score according to a use frequency and compatibility with another resource. Yang [0079] – [0080] teaches performing suitability analysis to determine if backfill window has enough resource for another job before allowing backfilling. James [0045] and [0064] has shown that alternatively, a resource’s suitability can be determined via fest fit value calculated based on the resource’s frequencies of use and future resource contention. The combination of Yang and James would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art as it would be readily apparent that a resource’s suitability score can be determined in a variety of ways, applicants have thus merely claimed the combination of known parts in the field to achieve predictable results of determine the candidate resource’s suitability for a task and is therefore rejected under 35 USC 103.
As per claim 3, the combination of Yang and James further teach:
The non-transitory computer-readable recording medium according to claim 1, wherein the process adds the second score of a resource according to the use frequency, in the obtaining the second score. (James [0045] and [0064].)
As per claim 4, the combination of Yang and James further teach:
The non-transitory computer-readable recording medium according to claim 1, wherein the process subtracts the second score of a resource with the low compatibility, in the obtaining the second score. (James [0045] and [0064]: best fit means removal of the non best ones.)
As per claim 5, it is the method variant of claim 1 and is therefore rejected under the same rationale.
As per claim 7, it is the method variant of claim 3 and is therefore rejected under the same rationale.
As per claim 8, it is the method variant of claim 4 and is therefore rejected under the same rationale.
As per claim 9, it is the device variant of claim 1 and is therefore rejected under the same rationale. (Yang figure 1: hardware.)
As per claim 11, it is the device variant of claim 3 and is therefore rejected under the same rationale.
As per claim 12, it is the device variant of claim 4 and is therefore rejected under the same rationale.
Claim(s) 2, 6 and 10 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Yang and James, and further in view of Huh et al (US 20160170791, hereinafter Huh).
As per claim 2, the combination of Yang and James did not teach:
The non-transitory computer-readable recording medium according to claim 1, wherein the process allocates each resource to the user in a case where a resource use rate of the virtualization system is higher than a predetermined value.
However, Huh teaches:
The non-transitory computer-readable recording medium according to claim 1, wherein the process allocates each resource to the user in a case where a resource use rate of the virtualization system is higher than a predetermined value. (Huh [0014]: “The selecting unit may include a hotspot detecting unit which compares the monitored resource usage amount with a predetermined threshold value and detects a server whose resource usage amount exceeds the threshold value as a hotspot and a virtual machine determining unit which determines a virtual machine or a resource which is a cause of the hotspot in consideration of a service execution time and the resource usage amount of the virtual machines in the server which is detected as the hotspot. The control unit may assign a priority to a virtual machine having a high resource usage rate among virtual machines to be migrated and control the virtual machine having a high priority to be preferentially migrated.”)
It would have been obvious for one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to incorporate the teaching of Huh into that of Yang and James in order to have the process allocates each resource to the user in a case where a resource use rate of the virtualization system is higher than a predetermined value. Yang teaches determining backfilling window for interleaving jobs in the window to achieve maximum execution efficiency. Huh [0014] has shown that other trigger can also influence the activation of the load balancing steps, such as when utilization being above a threshold as taught by Huh [0014]. Applicants have merely claimed the combination of known parts in the field in order to achieve the predictable results of performing load balancing to improve execution efficiency and is therefore rejected under 35 USC 103.
As per claim 6, it is the method variant of claim 2 and is therefore rejected under the same rationale.
As per claim 10, it is the device variant of claim 2 and is therefore rejected under the same rationale.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
Featonby et al (USPAT 11138049) teaches “The optimization service may gather various information or data about the workload, such as utilization characteristics of the underlying computing resources, and decompose the workloads through a number of dimensions that can be used to describe the workload. Further, the optimization service may analyze the utilization characteristics and/or other data to determine more optimized VM instance types for the workloads that are to be recommended to the users, and also rationales that describes why each recommendation is an appropriate fit for the workload being assessed. Using this information, the optimization service may generate narratives that include a description of the workload behaviors and utilization patterns, a set of recommendations, and supporting narrative or rationales for each of the recommendations.”.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to CHARLES M SWIFT whose telephone number is (571)270-7756. The examiner can normally be reached Monday - Friday: 9:30 AM - 7PM.
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/CHARLES M SWIFT/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2196