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 communication filed 10/25/2023.
Claims 1-20 are presented for examination.
Examiner Notes
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 apply as well. It is respectfully requested that, in preparing responses, the applicant fully consider the references in entirely 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.
Drawings
The drawings are objected to because
“BBMC” of block 504 of Fig. 6 should be: BMC
The “YES” and “NO” labels for block 506 of Fig. 6 should be exchanged.
“A SECOND SET” at 2nd line of block 508 of Fig. 6 should be: A SECOND SUBSET.
“ASERVICE RUNNING ON THE BMC” at lines 1-2 of block 522 of Fig. 6 should be: A SERVICE RUNNING ON THE CLOUD.
Corrected drawing sheets in compliance with 37 CFR 1.121(d) are required in reply to the Office action to avoid abandonment of the application. Any amended replacement drawing sheet should include all of the figures appearing on the immediate prior version of the sheet, even if only one figure is being amended. The figure or figure number of an amended drawing should not be labeled as “amended.” If a drawing figure is to be canceled, the appropriate figure must be removed from the replacement sheet, and where necessary, the remaining figures must be renumbered and appropriate changes made to the brief description of the several views of the drawings for consistency. Additional replacement sheets may be necessary to show the renumbering of the remaining figures. Each drawing sheet submitted after the filing date of an application must be labeled in the top margin as either “Replacement Sheet” or “New Sheet” pursuant to 37 CFR 1.121(d). If the changes are not accepted by the examiner, the applicant will be notified and informed of any required corrective action in the next Office action. The objection to the drawings will not be held in abeyance.
Specification
The disclosure is objected to because of the following informalities:
“the steps off” at line 2 of [0005] should be: the steps of.
“HIS” at line 3 of [0006] should be: IHS (note: the specification including multiple similar typos, such as “the HIS 200” at line 11 of [0041] and “HIS 200” at line 8 of [0045]. Applicant is suggested to review the whole specification to confirm all similar typos).
“a backbone communication network 320” at line 2 and “a first login session 320” at line 6 of [0068] used same numeric label of 320.
“If the user selects to not run the BMC 230 … and the process ends at step 512” at lines 4-8 is suggested to be reviewed and rewritten according to the corrected logic of block 506 of Fig. 6.
“a second set of services” at line 3 of [0078] should be: a second subset of service
Appropriate correction is required.
Claim Objections
Claims 1-20 are objected to because of the following informalities:
“the services” at lines 8 and 9 of claim 1 should be: the plurality of services.
Claims 2-8 are objected for failing to cure the deficiency from their respective parent claim by dependency. In addition, each of claims 2, 3 and 8 are objected due to same reason set forth in item (I) above.
“the cloud service” at line 2 of claim 2 should be: the cloud computing environment.
Claim 9 is objected due to same reason set forth in item (I) above.
Claims 10-15 are objected for failing to cure the deficiency from their respective parent claim by dependency. In addition, each of claims 10 and 15 are objected due to same reason set forth in item (I) above.
Claim 10 is objected due to same reason set forth in item (IV) above.
“the services” at line 4 of claim 16 should be: a plurality of services (and thus “a plurality of services” at line 5 of claim 16 should be: the plurality of services).
“the services” at line 7 of claim 16 is objected due to same reason set forth in item (I) above.
Claims 17-20 are objected for failing to cure the deficiency from their respective parent claim by dependency. In addition, each of claims 17-18 and 20 are objected due to same reason set forth in item (I) above.
Claim 17 is objected due to same reason set forth in item (IV) above.
Appropriate correction is required.
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.
Claims 1, 7, 9, 14 and 16 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Bhatia et al. (US 20160321197 A1, hereafter Bhatia) in view of Faasse et al. (US 20240061964 A1, hereafter Faasse).
Regarding to claim 1, Bhatia discloses: An Information Handling System (IHS) (see Fig. 1, [0003], [0059] and [0066]; “The system 100 is capable of providing BMC functionalities in a plurality of split BMC stacks, with one subset of the BMC functionalities including time critical functions, and the other subset of the BMC functionalities including the rest of the non-critical functions” and “The first management device 120 is the management device that includes one subset of the BMC functionalities to control time critical functionalities”) comprising:
a Baseboard Management Controller (BMC) that is configured to execute a plurality of services for managing the operation of the HIS (see Fig. 1, [0003], [0066]; “The system 100 is capable of providing BMC functionalities in a plurality of split BMC stacks, with one subset of the BMC functionalities including time critical functions, and the other subset of the BMC functionalities including the rest of the non-critical functions” and “The first management device 120 is the management device that includes one subset of the BMC functionalities to control time critical functionalities”);
at least one processor; and at least one memory coupled to the at least one processor, the at least one memory having program instructions stored thereon that, upon execution by the at least one processor, cause the IHS to (see Fig. 1, [0066]-[0067]; “the first management device 120 has a processor 122, a memory 124, a non-volatile memory 126”):
execute a first subset of the services on the BMC (see [0059] and [0066]; “providing BMC functionalities in a plurality of split BMC stacks, with one subset of the BMC functionalities including time critical functions” and “The first management device 120 is the management device that includes one subset of the BMC functionalities to control time critical functionalities”. Also see [0058]; “the D-IPMI system may include multiple management devices (such as multiple computer chips), in which one management devices maintains a certain subset of the BMC functionalities, and a different subset of the BMC functionalities may be offloaded to another management device”); and
execute a second subset of the services on an external computing environment in communication with the BMC (see [0059] and [0072]; “providing BMC functionalities in a plurality of split BMC stacks … and the other subset of the BMC functionalities including the rest of the non-critical functions” and “The second management device 130 is the management device that includes the other subset of the BMC functionalities to control non-critical functionalities”. Also see [0058]; “the D-IPMI system may include multiple management devices (such as multiple computer chips), in which one management devices maintains a certain subset of the BMC functionalities, and a different subset of the BMC functionalities may be offloaded to another management device”. Furthermore, see [0078] and [0080]; “the firmware 138 may perform the internal communication with the first management device 120 through the stack interface 160 to request the required system information of the computing device 110 from the first management device 120 … the firmware 128 of the first management device 120 performs the time-critical functions to request the system information of the computing device 110”).
Bhatia does not disclose: execute a second subset of the services on a cloud computing environment.
However, Faasse discloses: execute offloaded BMC services on a cloud computing environment (see [0038]-[0040]; “The Net-SCM 102 is a device that replaces a BMC and associated circuitry or a DC-SCM, but offloads BMC functionality to another server 136 so that changes to accommodate new or different functionality of a BMC/DC-SCM are able to be implemented through software changes”. Also see [0047]; “the management application 134 and server 136 are in a cloud computing environment”).
It would have been obvious to one with ordinary skill, in the art before the effective filing date of the claim invention, to modify the processes of offloading BMC services from a local device to a remote device of same distributed system from Bhatia by including the process of offloading BMC services from a local device to a remote device of a cloud environment from Faasse, and thus the combination of Bhatia and Faasse would disclose the missing limitations from Bhatia, since cloud computing environment is well-known and understood type of scalable and elastic pool of resources.
Regarding to Claim 7, the rejection of Claim 1 is incorporated and further the combination of Bhatia and Faasse discloses: wherein the instructions, upon execution, cause the IHS to determine, for each service, whether to execute the service on the cloud computing environment or the BMC according to how critical the service is to the operation of the HIS (see [0018]-[0022] from Bhatia; “performing, by the first IPMI related computer executable code executed at the first processor of the first management device, a plurality of time critical functions related to the computing device” and “performing, by the second IPMI related computer executable code executed at the second processor of the at least one second management device, a plurality of non-critical functions related to the computing device”).
Regarding to Claim 9, Claim 9 is a method claim corresponds to system Claim 1 and is rejected for the same reason set forth in the rejection of Claim 1 above.
Regarding to Claim 14, the rejection of Claim 9 is incorporated and further Claim 14 is a method claim corresponds to system Claim 7 and is rejected for the same reason set forth in the rejection of Claim 7 above.
Regarding to Claim 16, Claim 16 is a product claim corresponds to system Claim 1 and is rejected for the same reason set forth in the rejection of Claim 1 above.
Claims 2, 10-11 and 17 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Bhatia et al. (US 20160321197 A1, hereafter Bhatia) in view of Faasse et al. (US 20240061964 A1, hereafter Faasse) and further in view of Zhang et al. (US 20250227160 A1, hereafter Zhang).
Regarding to Claim 2, the rejection of Claim 1 is incorporated and further the combination of Bhatia and Faasse discloses: wherein the instructions, upon execution, cause the services executed on the cloud service to communicate with the BMC using a communication interface (see [0078], [0080] from Bhatia and [0067] from Faasse; “the firmware 138 may perform the internal communication with the first management device 120 through the stack interface 160 to request the required system information of the computing device 110 from the first management device 120 … the firmware 128 of the first management device 120 performs the time-critical functions to request the system information of the computing device 110” and “the Net-SCM 102 transmits the management signals 312 to the management application 134 using a security protocol, such as encryption, tunneling, or other security mechanism that ensures security of the transmitted management signals 312”. Note: at the combination system, the external device to execute the offloaded subset of BMC services is an external device at cloud environment).
The combination of Bhatia and Faasse does not disclose: the communication interface is a Secure Shell (SHH) tunnel.
However, Zhang discloses: the processes executed on the cloud service to communicate with the BMC using a Secure Shell (SHH) tunnel (see [00322] and [0049]; “the edge server 106 to establish a tunnel connection 134 with the cloud server 124 where the tunnel connection uses a Secure Shell (“SSH”) protocol. SSH is a cryptographic network protocol for operating network services securely over an unsecured network. In the system 100 of FIG. 1A, the tunnel connection 134 is depicted with an SSH 114 in the BMC 104 and an SSH 132 in the cloud server 124. SSH tunnel connection 134 and tunnel connection 134 are used interchangeably herein”).
It would have been obvious to one with ordinary skill, in the art before the effective filing date of the claim invention, to modify the tunneling communication interface between external device on the cloud and BMC of the local device from the combination of Bhatia and Faasse by including SSH communication protocol between cloud and BMC from Zhang, and thus the combination of Bhatia, Faasse and Zhang would disclose the missing limitations from the combination of Bhatia and Faasse, since “SSH is a cryptographic network protocol for operating network services securely over an unsecured network”, i.e., SSH is a well-known and understood type of security protocol (see [0049] from Zhang).
Regarding to Claim 10, the rejection of Claim 9 is incorporated and further Claim 10 is a method claim corresponds to system Claim 2 and is rejected for the same reason set forth in the rejection of Claim 2 above.
Regarding to Claim 11, the rejection of Claim 10 is incorporated and further the combination of Bhatia, Faasse and Zhang discloses: updating a service on the cloud computing environment while the BMC remains operational (see [0040] and [0063] from Faasse; “The Net-SCM 102 … offloads BMC functionality to another server 136 so that changes to accommodate new or different functionality of a BMC/DC-SCM are able to be implemented through software changes” and “Having the BIOS and BMC images on or accessible to the management application 134 allows for simple updates by just accessing a different image, overwriting an image, etc”).
Regarding to Claim 17, the rejection of Claim 16 is incorporated and further Claim 17 is a product claim corresponds to system Claim 2 and is rejected for the same reason set forth in the rejection of Claim 2 above.
Claims 3-4 and 18-19 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Bhatia et al. (US 20160321197 A1, hereafter Bhatia) in view of Faasse et al. (US 20240061964 A1, hereafter Faasse) and further in view of An et al. (US 20240160963 A1, hereafter An).
Regarding to Claim 3, the rejection of Claim 1 is incorporated, the combination of Bhatia and Faasse does not disclose: wherein the services comprise a plurality of Desktop Bus (D-Bus) objects that communicate among one another using a D-Bus.
However, An discloses: wherein the services comprise a plurality of Desktop Bus (D-Bus) objects that communicate among one another using a D-Bus (see [0031], [0033] and [0041], “Inter-module communication and sensor data collection in the intelligent BMC may be performed based on a system DBus” and “Communication between the monitoring engine 110 and the sensors S may be performed through a protocol such as an IPMI, an IPMB, based on the system DBus”).
It would have been obvious to one with ordinary skill, in the art before the effective filing date of the claim invention, to modify the BMC from the combination of Bhatia and Faasse by including DBus used for connecting different modules within the BMC system from An, and thus the combination of Bhatia, Faasse and An would disclose the missing limitations from the combination of Bhatia and Faasse, since DBus is well-known and understood inter-module communication protocol for a BMC component (see [0031], [0033] and [0041] from An).
Regarding to Claim 4, the rejection of Claim 3 is incorporated and further the combination of Bhatia, Faasse and An discloses: wherein the instructions, upon execution, cause the IHS to update a service on the cloud computing environment while the BMC remains operational (see [0040] and [0063] from Faasse; “The Net-SCM 102 … offloads BMC functionality to another server 136 so that changes to accommodate new or different functionality of a BMC/DC-SCM are able to be implemented through software changes” and “Having the BIOS and BMC images on or accessible to the management application 134 allows for simple updates by just accessing a different image, overwriting an image, etc”).
Regarding to Claim 18, the rejection of Claim 16 is incorporated and further Claim 18 is a product claim corresponds to system Claim 3 and is rejected for the same reason set forth in the rejection of Claim 3 above.
Regarding to Claim 19, the rejection of Claim 18 is incorporated and further Claim 19 is a product claim corresponds to system Claim 4 and is rejected for the same reason set forth in the rejection of Claim 4 above.
Claims 5-6 and 12-13 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Bhatia et al. (US 20160321197 A1, hereafter Bhatia) in view of Faasse et al. (US 20240061964 A1, hereafter Faasse) and further in view of Haggart et al. (US 20210203547 A1, hereafter Haggart).
Regarding to Claim 5, the rejection of Claim 1 is incorporated, the combination of Bhatia and Faasse does not disclose: wherein the instructions, upon execution, cause the IHS to determine, for each service, whether to execute the service on the cloud computing environment or the BMC according to a processing load level incurred by the service.
However, Haggart discloses: wherein the instructions, upon execution, cause the IHS to determine, for each service, whether to execute the service on the cloud computing environment or the IHS according to a processing load level incurred by the service (see [0107], [0113] and [0197]-[0198]; “The workload profiling includes CPU, memory, IO, and network utilization for all on-premises workloads that have been targeted for migration to the cloud” and “cloud migration objectives may include one or more choices of CSP or … a required level of performance for some or all applications or workloads that need to be migrated to the cloud infrastructure” and “generates utilization levels matching, as much as possible, the on-premises utilization levels. The on-premise utilization levels of synthetic workloads are the reference that is compared to the representative synthetic workload utilization levels in the cloud … which workloads of the enterprise network to migrate to a CSP, and which CSP may be best suited for the customer's needs. The customer may utilize this information to determine which CSP to migrate their on-premises infrastructure to and which CSP to choose”).
It would have been obvious to one with ordinary skill, in the art before the effective filing date of the claim invention, to modify the policy of offloading a subset of BMC functions to cloud computing environment from the combination of Bhatia and Faasse by including policy of migrating certain workloads to cloud environment based on resource utilization level of the workloads from Haggart, and thus the combination of Bhatia, Faasse and Haggart would disclose the missing limitations from the combination of Bhatia and Faasse, since it would provide a mechanism to ensure execution performance of the workloads (see [0107] and [0113] from Haggart).
Regarding to Claim 6, the rejection of Claim 1 is incorporated, the combination of Bhatia and Faasse does not disclose: wherein the instructions, upon execution, cause the IHS to determine, for each service, whether to execute the service on the cloud computing environment or the BMC according to a security sensitivity level required by the service.
However, Haggart discloses: wherein the instructions, upon execution, cause the IHS to determine, for each service, whether to execute the service on the cloud computing environment or the IHS according to a security sensitivity level required by the service (see [0113] and [0192]-[0194]; “cloud migration objectives may include one or more choices of CSP or a required level of security for some or all of the applications or workloads that need to be migrated to a cloud infrastructure”).
It would have been obvious to one with ordinary skill, in the art before the effective filing date of the claim invention, to modify the policy of offloading a subset of BMC functions to cloud computing environment from the combination of Bhatia and Faasse by including policy of migrating certain workloads to cloud environment based on security requirement of the workloads from Haggart, and thus the combination of Bhatia, Faasse and Haggart would disclose the missing limitations from the combination of Bhatia and Faasse, since it would provide a mechanism to ensure execution environment of the workloads (see [0113] from Haggart).
Regarding to Claim 12, the rejection of Claim 9 is incorporated and further Claim 12 is a method claim corresponds to system Claim 5 and is rejected for the same reason set forth in the rejection of Claim 5 above.
Regarding to Claim 13, the rejection of Claim 9 is incorporated and further Claim 13 is a method claim corresponds to system Claim 6 and is rejected for the same reason set forth in the rejection of Claim 6 above.
Claims 8, 15 and 20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Bhatia et al. (US 20160321197 A1, hereafter Bhatia) in view of Faasse et al. (US 20240061964 A1, hereafter Faasse) and further in view of Zhang et al. (US 11868793 B2, hereafter Zhang).
Regarding to Claim 8, the rejection of Claim 1 is incorporated, the combination of Bhatia and Faasse does not disclose: wherein the instructions, upon execution, cause the IHS to receive user input for determining whether the services are executed in the cloud computing environment or the BMC.
However, Zhang discloses: wherein the instructions, upon execution, cause the IHS to receive user input for determining whether the services are executed in the cloud computing environment or the IHS (see claim 1; “receiving, from a tenant of a first host machine and a second host machine of a cloud computer service, preferences for scheduling a cloud update of at least one of the first host machine or the second host machine, the first host machine and the second host machine each hosting one or more virtual machines of the tenant, the preferences specifying whether the tenant will accept migration of an instance of the one or more virtual machines to a different host machine”).
It would have been obvious to one with ordinary skill, in the art before the effective filing date of the claim invention, to modify the policy of offloading a subset of BMC functions to cloud computing environment from the combination of Bhatia and Faasse by including policy of migrating certain workloads to another device based on user’s preferences from Zhang, and thus the combination of Bhatia, Faasse and Zhang would disclose the missing limitations from the combination of Bhatia and Faasse, since it would provide a mechanism to executing workloads based on tenant or user’s needs (see claim 1 from Zhang).
Regarding to Claim 15, the rejection of Claim 9 is incorporated and further Claim 15 is a method claim corresponds to system Claim 8 and is rejected for the same reason set forth in the rejection of Claim 8 above.
Regarding to Claim 20, the rejection of Claim 16 is incorporated and further Claim 20 is a product claim corresponds to system Claim 8 and is rejected for the same reason set forth in the rejection of Claim 8 above.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
Heinrich et al. (US 20210342169 A1) disclose: External security service requests may be generated, for example, by components that use a secure protocol, such as a Secure Shell (SSH) protocol, to communicate with the computer system 100 (e.g., via the NIC 153 of the BMC 130) (see [0044]).
Gupta et al. (US 20240160427 A1) discloses: offload specific services on a high load BMC to other management controllers (see [0056] and [0089]).
Bower, III et al. (US 20240362099 A1) discloses: although the BMC may be responsible for performing system hardware failure prediction, especially including memory failure prediction (MFP), the actual performance of the hardware failure prediction may be offloaded to the Smart NIC to reduce the load on the BMC (see [0020]).
Moustafa et al. (US 20230018191 A1) discloses: migrating one or more services to another location based on security requirements of the one or more services (see [0156]).
O'Connor et al. (US 20140115290 A1) discloses: the personalization agent, the digital assets entitlement system, or another component may query a user, for the various candidate digital assets, which candidate digital assets (if any) the user desires to migrate to the cloud storage provider. The query may also seek user preferences regarding whether to migrate one or more candidate files to both a cloud service provider and a target system (see [0079]).
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to ZHI CHEN whose telephone number is (571)272-0805. The examiner can normally be reached on M-F from 9:30AM to 5:30PM.
If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, April Y Blair can be reached on 571-270-1014. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/Zhi Chen/
Patent Examiner, AU2196
/APRIL Y BLAIR/Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2196