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 .
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statement (IDS) submitted on 03/30/2026 is in compliance with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.97. Accordingly, the information disclosure statement is being considered by the examiner.
Response to Amendment
In response to communication filed on 18 May 2011, claims 1 and 7 have been amended; and claims 8-15 have been added per the applicant’s request. Accordingly, claims 1-15 are presently pending in the application.
The Examiner accepts the replacement abstract of the disclosure; therefore, the previous objection has been withdrawn.
The previous rejections under 35 U.S.C. 101 have been withdrawn in light of the applicant’s amendments.
Response to Arguments
Applicant's arguments with respect to the claims have been considered but are moot in view of the new ground(s) of rejection. The independent claims have been amended to include new limitations that were never previously presented; thereby, these amendments change the scope of the claims. However, newly found prior art is applied.
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.
Claims 1-5, 7 and 12-15 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Gentes et al. (U.S. Patent No. 8,464,092 B1, hereinafter “Gentes”) in view of Schultz et al. (U.S. PGPUB No. 2017/0060718 A1, hereinafter “Schultz”), and further in view of Shear et al. (AU-2014236646-A1, hereinafter “Shear”).
Regarding claim 1, Gentes teaches a determination system, comprising one or more processors, the determination system causing at least one of the one or more processors to execute:
an application monitoring process of monitoring whether an application which is included in a communication system and which includes processes that are dispersedly operating on a plurality of virtual machines has become unstable (Gentes Col 1 Ln 66 to Col 2 Ln 6, i.e., “Various embodiments of systems and methods are disclosed for monitoring an application or service group within one cluster as a resource of another cluster. In one embodiment, a method involves detecting an error indication generated by a first cluster (e.g., the error indication can be generated by a cluster controller or service group within the first cluster). The first cluster is implemented on a cluster resource (e.g., a virtual machine) that is monitored by a second cluster.”.
Gentes fails to explicitly teach a process instability determination process of determining, in response to detecting that the application has become unstable, for each of the plurality of virtual machines on which at least one process included in the application is operating, whether the at least one process operating on the each of the plurality of virtual machines is unstable. However, in the same field of endeavor, Schultz teaches a process instability determination process of determining, in response to detecting that the application has become unstable, for each of the plurality of virtual machines on which at least one process included in the application is operating, whether the at least one process operating on the each of the plurality of virtual machines is unstable (Schultz ¶0019, i.e., determine an error conditions associated with at least on particular VM). It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Gentes by incorporating the teachings of Schultz. The motivation would be for using an external event detection for error conditions associated with at least one particular VM, which could be delivered to a remote device and/or user in order to determine the appropriate course of action to take (Schultz ¶0019).
Gentes as modified by Schultz fails to explicitly teach an action execution process of outputting, in response to determining that the process is unstable, an instruction for replacement of the at least one process found to be unstable to a life cycle manager. However, in the same field of endeavor, Shear teaches an action execution process of outputting, in response to determining that the process is unstable, an instruction for replacement of the at least one process found to be unstable to a life cycle manager (Shear page 344, i.e., “Coherence process may also interact with other processes that operate a schedule/listing of alternate resources that may be substituted for an operating resource should that operating resource become unavailable/unstable for any reason. For example a Cloud operator may have make available one or more alternate resources, such as for example Virtual Machines(VM), that Coherence may then substitute in an operating session”, and page 363, i.e., “Coherence Services may use such processes as outlined above during a purpose cycle and/or other PERCos operations to evaluate, validate, and/or modify such resources so that they are consistent”). It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Gentes and Schultz by incorporating the teachings of Shear. The motivation would be for providing a coherence process to efficiently evaluate the impact of variations of resources and/or their contextual circumstances, in an efficient and timely manner (Shear page 343).
As to claim 2, Gentes as modified by Schultz and Shear also teaches the determination system according to 1, wherein, in the application monitoring process, a plurality of monitoring items relating to the application are monitored (Gentes Fig. 5, monitoring error in cluster sources on node or sub-cluster implemented on one of the cluster resources of the VM that the application is executed on), and wherein, in the process instability determination process, in response to detecting that a result of the monitoring of a given monitoring item among the plurality of monitoring items satisfies a predetermined condition, for each of the plurality of virtual machines on which at least one process included in the application is operating, it is determined whether the at least one process operating on the each of the plurality of virtual machines is unstable (Schultz ¶0019).
As to claim 3, Gentes as modified by Schultz and Shear also teaches the determination system according to claim 1, wherein the determination system causes the at least one of the one or more processors to execute a cluster monitoring process of monitoring whether a cluster which is included in the communication system and in which a plurality of applications are operating has become unstable (Gentes Fig. 3, i.e., cluster of nodes which communicate to each other, and Fig. 5, i.e., detect error on a cluster resource on which the application is executed), and
wherein, in the application monitoring process, in response to detecting that the cluster has become unstable, monitoring of whether each of the plurality of applications operating in the cluster has become unstable is started (Gentes Col 5 Ln 45 – 67).
As to claim 4, Gentes as modified by Schultz and Shear also teaches the determination system according to claim 1, wherein the determination system causes the at least one of the one or more processors to execute an action execution process of executing, in response to determining that the process is unstable, an action relating to the process (Schultz ¶0019, i.e., generating and sending alert).
As to claim 5, Gentes as modified by Schultz and Shear also teaches the determination system according to claim 4, wherein, in the process instability determination process, in response to determining that the process is unstable, it is determined whether a process which is operating on a hardware resource on which the process is operating and which is operating on a virtual machine different from a virtual machine on which the process is operating is unstable (Gentes Col 5 Ln 5-25, i.e., an error condition could include hardware error), and wherein, in the action execution process, an action corresponding to a result of the determination of whether the process operating on the different virtual machine is unstable is executed (Schulz ¶0019, i.e., a user might switch between the VMs to investigate the error condition(s)).
Claim 7 recites the limitations substantially similar to those of claim 1 and is similarly rejected.
As to claim 12, Gentes as modified by Schultz and Shear also teaches the determination system according to claim 1, wherein, in the process instability determination process, the at least one process is determined to be unstable in response to a process stability evaluation value indicated by process stability evaluation value data being less than a predetermined threshold value (Shear page 189, i.e., “The resource Manager Services may invoke and/or instance one or more PERCos platform Monitor Services and associate them with one or more resources (including sets thereof) comprising a resource assembly. Such relationships may be determined by specifications and/or resource Manager Services for efficiency, redundancy, fail over and/or other considerations. For example, a resource Manager Service instance may be provided with control specifications that specify the formulation of such relationships. PM&E supports management of resource assembly instances by providing mechanisms for receiving specifications comprising performance parameters, comparing operating resource performance parameters to those specified service performance requirements, and then identifying any variance that exceeds and/or approaches any limits, thresholds or other values as determined by the incoming control specifications”).
As to claim 13, Gentes as modified by Schultz and Shear also teaches the determination system according to claim 1, wherein, in response to detecting that the application has become unstable, the determination system outputs to a monitor an instruction to start outputting process stability evaluation value data for each of the plurality of processes included in the application (Shear page 429, i.e., “Monitoring Services provide for 1. the observation (monitoring) of resources, 2. evaluation of those operations with control specifications comprising agreed operating parameters, and, 3. subsequent generation of messages where such evaluation determines how the incoming monitoring information (input specifications) may have varied from the parameters as defined by those parameters”).
Claim 14 recites the limitations substantially similar to those of claim 12 and is similarly rejected.
Claim 15 recites the limitations substantially similar to those of claim 13 and is similarly rejected.
Claim 6 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Gentes in view of Schultz and Shear, and further in view of BISSET et al. (U.S. PGPUB No. 2016/0328302 A1, hereinafter “Bissett”).
As to claim 6, Gentes as modified by Schultz and Shear teaches the determination system according to claim 1, but fails to explicitly teach wherein the application is a network function. However, in the same field of endeavor, Bissett teaches the application is a network function (Bissett Fig. 1, i.e., fault in a network communication path between FT application running on Host 1 and FT application running on Host 2). It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Gentes, Schultz, and Shear by incorporating the teachings of Bissett. The motivation would be for determining faults in network paths between VMs running the application (Bissett ¶0011).
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 8-11 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 features of claim limitations recited in claims 8-11 in combination with the other limitations recited in the context of their respective base claim(s) is allowable subject matter.
Conclusion
Applicant's amendment necessitated the new ground(s) of rejection presented in this Office action. Accordingly, THIS ACTION IS MADE FINAL. See MPEP § 706.07(a). Applicant is reminded of the extension of time policy as set forth in 37 CFR 1.136(a).
A shortened statutory period for reply to this final action is set to expire THREE MONTHS from the mailing date of this action. In the event a first reply is filed within TWO MONTHS of the mailing date of this final action and the advisory action is not mailed until after the end of the THREE-MONTH shortened statutory period, then the shortened statutory period will expire on the date the advisory action is mailed, and any nonprovisional extension fee (37 CFR 1.17(a)) pursuant to 37 CFR 1.136(a) will be calculated from the mailing date of the advisory action. In no event, however, will the statutory period for reply expire later than SIX MONTHS from the mailing date of this final action.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to ALEXANDER KHONG whose telephone number is (571)270-7127. The examiner can normally be reached Mon-Fri 8am-5pm EST.
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If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Charles Rones can be reached at (571)272-4085. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/ALEXANDER KHONG/ Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2168
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