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 2/27/2024.
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.
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statement (IDS) submitted on 9/29/2025 and 4/24/2026. The submissions are in compliance with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.97. Accordingly, the information disclosure statement is being considered by the examiner.
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 1-3, 10-11 and 16-17 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Mandagere et al. (US 20200264930 A1, hereafter Mandagere) in view of Wagener et al. (US 20170093622 A1, hereafter Wagener).
Regarding to claim 1. Mandagere discloses: A system, comprising: a memory that stores executable components; and a processor that executes the executable components stored in the memory (see [0053]-[0054]; “The present embodiments may be a system, a method, and/or a computer program product. The computer program product may include a computer readable storage medium (or media) having computer readable program instructions thereon for causing a processor to carry out aspects of the present embodiments” and “A non-exhaustive list of more specific examples of the computer readable storage medium includes the following: … a random access memory (RAM), a read-only memory (ROM), an erasable programmable read-only memory (EPROM or Flash memory), a static random access memory (SRAM) … a memory stick”), wherein the executable components comprise:
a configuration component that manages a topology configuration of a cluster of virtual machines (VMs) operating in a cloud computing system in response to a storage expansion request for the cluster of VMs (see Figs. 1-3, [0035]; “to support container volume requests. Examples of these request initiated by one or more of the containerized applications include, but are not limited to, a request for storage volume creation or deletion, a request for storage volume attachment or detachment … creating, deleting, attaching, detaching, and/or migrating select volume according to a computed assignment (316). In addition, following any changes conducted at step (316), the application workflow model, the topology model, and the storage model are selectively updated to reflect the changes (318)”. Also see [0006], [0031], [0037]; “The models include one or more of a workflow model, an application container topology model, and a storage model … the application container topology model identifies a relationship between containers, and container dependencies, and the storage topology model identifies a relationship and dependencies of storage volumes”, “With support of the models (180)-(184) and the optimizer (186), the manager (170) selectively assigns or modifies an assignment of the containers with respect to one or more storage volumes (162)-(168)” and “The manager selects the identified storage volume(s) (408), and assigns the selected volume(s) to the container (410). The assignment at step (410) is reflected in one or more of the models (412). More specifically, the manager updates the models to reflect the assignment so that the models have a current reflection of the state of the workflow, container topology, and storage assignments and topology”);
a storage expansion component that adds new storage volumes to respective VMs of the cluster of VMs, wherein the configuration component facilitates updating the topology configuration of the cluster of VMs in response to the storage expansion component successfully adding the new storage volumes (see Figs. 1-3, [0035]; “a request for storage volume creation or deletion, a request for storage volume attachment or detachment … creating, deleting, attaching, detaching, and/or migrating select volume according to a computed assignment (316). In addition, following any changes conducted at step (316), the application workflow model, the topology model, and the storage model are selectively updated to reflect the changes (318)”. Also see [0006]; “The models include one or more of a workflow model, an application container topology model, and a storage model … the application container topology model identifies a relationship between containers, and container dependencies, and the storage topology model identifies a relationship and dependencies of storage volumes”).
Mandagere does not disclose: a configuration component that freezes the topology configuration in response to a storage expansion request;
adds new storage volumes in response to the configuration component freezing the topology configuration.
However, Wagener discloses: a configuration component that freezes a topology configuration of a cluster of objects in response to a [storage] expansion request for the cluster of objects; and a [storage] expansion component that adds new objects to the cluster of objects in response to the configuration component freezing the topology configuration of the cluster of objects; wherein the configuration component facilitates updating the topology configuration of the cluster of objects in response to the [storage] expansion component successfully adding the new objects (see [0035]; “If the topology of the automation system 10 is altered … the topology part to be processed is locked exclusively on the central FDI server 11. The possible alterations to the topology include, in particular, adding and deleting field devices 13 and shifting field devices 13 to another location in the topology. During this time, no other user can alter the topology in this region. In this state, the central FDI server 11 does not allow access to the selected part of the topology, neither for reading nor for writing”. Note: [0035] may not explicitly describe updating or resuming the topology configuration from frozen state; however, the language of “During this time” from [0035] implies that locking topology configuration is limited to duration of performing topology alternation operations and then the lock will be released or resuming in response to completion of topology alternation operations).
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 topology management from Mandagere by including locking topology when there is an operation causes change in topology from Wagener, and thus the combination of Mandagere and Wagener would disclose the missing limitations from Mandagere, since it would provide a mechanism to prevent other alternations to the topology when there is a pending change operation (see [0035] from Wagener).
Regarding to Claim 2, the rejection of Claim 1 is incorporated and further the combination of Mandagere and Wagener discloses: wherein the new storage volumes are of a common capacity (see Fig. 1 and [0035] from Mandagere; “to support container volume requests. Examples of these request initiated by one or more of the containerized applications include, but are not limited to, a request for storage volume creation or deletion, a request for storage volume attachment or detachment, and a requested update to a storage volume, i.e. a change in requirements”. The new created storage volumes are of a common capacity of accessible to certain containers or virtual machines).
Regarding to Claim 3, the rejection of Claim 2 is incorporated and further the combination of Mandagere and Wagener discloses: wherein respective storage volumes associated with the respective VMs prior to addition of the new storage volumes are of the common capacity (see Fig. 1, [0028] and [0035] from Mandagere; “The storage volumes are attachable and detachable storage elements with respect to the containers”. The existed storage volumes prior to the new created storage volumes have the common capacity of accessible to certain containers or virtual machines as same as the new created storage volumes).
Regarding to claim 10, Mandagere discloses: A method (see [0053]; “The present embodiments may be a system, a method, and/or a computer program product. The computer program product may include a computer readable storage medium (or media) having computer readable program instructions thereon for causing a processor to carry out aspects of the present embodiments”), comprising:
managing, by a system comprising at least one processor, changes to an infrastructure configuration of a group of virtual machines (VMs) of a cloud computing system in response to receiving a request to expand a storage capacity of the group of VMs; associating, by the system in response to the managing, new storage volumes with respective VMs of the group of VMs; and achieving, by the system, the changes to the infrastructure configuration of the group of VMs in response to the associating being determined to have successfully completed (see Figs. 1-3, [0035]; “to support container volume requests … a request for storage volume creation or deletion, a request for storage volume attachment or detachment … creating, deleting, attaching, detaching, and/or migrating select volume according to a computed assignment (316). In addition, following any changes conducted at step (316), the application workflow model, the topology model, and the storage model are selectively updated to reflect the changes (318)”. Also see [0006], [0031], [0037]; “The models include one or more of a workflow model, an application container topology model, and a storage model … the application container topology model identifies a relationship between containers, and container dependencies, and the storage topology model identifies a relationship and dependencies of storage volumes”, “With support of the models (180)-(184) and the optimizer (186), the manager (170) selectively assigns or modifies an assignment of the containers with respect to one or more storage volumes (162)-(168)” and “The manager selects the identified storage volume(s) (408), and assigns the selected volume(s) to the container (410). The assignment at step (410) is reflected in one or more of the models (412). More specifically, the manager updates the models to reflect the assignment so that the models have a current reflection of the state of the workflow, container topology, and storage assignments and topology”).
Mandagere does not disclose:
suspending changes to an infrastructure configuration in response to receiving a request to expand a storage capacity;
associating is performed in response to the suspending; and
resuming the changes to the infrastructure configuration of the group of VMs in response to the associating being determined to have successfully completed.
However, Wagener discloses:
suspending, by a system comprising at least one processor, changes to an infrastructure configuration of a group of objects in response to receiving a request to expand a [storage] capacity of the group of objects; associating, by the system in response to the suspending, new object with respective objects of the group of objects; and resuming, by the system, the changes to the infrastructure configuration of the group of objects in response to the associating being determined to have successfully completed (see [0035]; “If the topology of the automation system 10 is altered … the topology part to be processed is locked exclusively on the central FDI server 11. The possible alterations to the topology include, in particular, adding and deleting field devices 13 and shifting field devices 13 to another location in the topology. During this time, no other user can alter the topology in this region. In this state, the central FDI server 11 does not allow access to the selected part of the topology, neither for reading nor for writing”. Note: [0035] may not explicitly describe resuming the topology configuration from locked state, i.e., claimed suspending state; however, the language of “During this time” from [0035] implies that locking topology configuration is limited to duration of performing topology alternation operations and then the lock will be released or resuming in response to completion of topology alternation operations).
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 topology management from Mandagere by including locking topology when there is an operation causes change in topology from Wagener, and thus the combination of Mandagere and Wagener would disclose the missing limitations from Mandagere, since it would provide a mechanism to prevent other alternations to the topology when there is a pending change operation (see [0035] from Wagener).
Regarding to Claim 11, the rejection of Claim 10 is incorporated and further the combination of Mandagere and Wagener discloses: wherein the new storage volumes are configured with a volume capacity, and wherein respective storage volumes associated with the group of VMs prior to the associating are configured with the volume capacity (see Fig. 1, [0028] and [0035] from Mandagere; “The storage volumes are attachable and detachable storage elements with respect to the containers” and “to support container volume requests. Examples of these request initiated by one or more of the containerized applications include, but are not limited to, a request for storage volume creation or deletion, a request for storage volume attachment or detachment, and a requested update to a storage volume, i.e. a change in requirements”. The existed storage volumes prior to the new created storage volumes have the volume capacity of accessible to certain containers or virtual machines as same as the new created storage volumes).
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.
Regarding to Claim 17, Claim 17 is a product claim corresponds to system Claims 2-3 and is rejected for the same reason set forth in the rejections of Claims 2 and 3 above.
Claims 4, 12 and 18 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Mandagere et al. (US 20200264930 A1, hereafter Mandagere) in view of Wagener et al. (US 20170093622 A1, hereafter Wagener) and further in view of Young et al. (KR 101579941 B1-English translation by Google Patents, publication date: 12/23/2015, hereafter Young) and Laker (US 20150370823 A1).
Regarding to Claim 4, the rejection of Claim 3 is incorporated and further the combination of Mandagere and Wagener discloses: a volume quantization component that determines a first amount of the new storage volumes to be added by the storage expansion component as a function of the common capacity and a second amount of the respective VMs of the cluster of VMs (see Fig. 1 and [0035] from Mandagere; “to support container volume requests. Examples of these request initiated by one or more of the containerized applications include, but are not limited to, a request for storage volume creation or deletion, a request for storage volume attachment or detachment, and a requested update to a storage volume, i.e. a change in requirements”. The new created storage volumes should be accessible to certain containers or virtual machines (i.e., claimed common capacity), and thus such new created storage volumes are added as a function of such common capacity and number of VMs or containers from the cluster).
The combination of Mandagere and Wagener does not disclose:
a volume quantization component that determines a first amount of the new storage volumes to be added by the storage expansion component as a function of a total amount of storage capacity specified in the storage expansion request.
However, Young discloses: a volume quantization component that determines a first amount of the new storage volumes to be allocated as a function of a total amount of storage capacity, the common capacity, and a second amount of the respective VMs of the cluster of VMs (see [0028] (or 5th paragraph of page 4 from the translation version); “the entire storage space of the HDD can be divided into any number of areas. Each area may include a plurality of sectors of the same number …. It will be readily understood by those skilled in the art that the size and number of storage areas can be variously determined depending on the size of the total storage space of the storage and / or the number of VMs expected to be allocated simultaneously”).
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 creation of storage volumes for the containers or virtual machines from the combination of Mandagere and Wagener by including assigning each virtualized environments same amount of storage size from Young, since it would provide a simplest fair resource assignment policy via assigning each virtual machines with same amount of resources (see [0028] from Young).
In addition, Laker discloses: a total amount of storage capacity specified in the storage expansion request (see [0087]; “sends to the file server 9002 a request to expand disk space for a filesystem. In some embodiments, the request includes the amount of disk space to add to the filesystem”).
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 virtual volume creation request from the combination of Mandagere, Wagener and Young by including a request for specifying total amount of disk space to be added for storage expansion operation from Laker, and thus the combination of Mandagere, Wagener, Young and Laker would disclose the missing limitations from the combination of Mandagere and Wagener, since it would provide a more specific storage expansion request to specify amount of storage space is required to add according to user’s need (see [0087] from Laker).
Regarding to Claim 12, Claim 12 is a method claim corresponds to system Claim 4 and is rejected for the same reason set forth in the rejection of Claim 4 above.
Regarding to Claim 18, Claim 18 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, 13 and 19 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Mandagere et al. (US 20200264930 A1, hereafter Mandagere) in view of Wagener et al. (US 20170093622 A1, hereafter Wagener) and further in view of Guha (US 20210349749 A1).
Regarding to Claim 5, the rejection of Claim 1 is incorporated, the combination of Mandagere and Wagener does not disclose: wherein the storage expansion component adds an equal amount of the new storage volumes to each VM in the cluster of VMs.
However, Guha discloses: wherein the storage expansion component adds an equal amount of the new storage volumes to each VM in the cluster of VMs (see [0062]; “why multiple options exist to provisioning a logical storage volume 102 for a VM 108 … the pool of available LSVs 102 will change over time as storage is consumed by the existing operating VMs 108 on their LSVs 102 across all shared data storage 100, new shared data storage 100 are added, or potentially space for allocating LSVs 102 increases when an existing VM 108 is deleted or decommissioned”. Note: since the new added data storage 100 is shared storage, and thus it adds an equal amount of new storage volumes to each VMs).
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 creation of storage volume from the combination of Mandagere and Wagener by including creating new shared data storage for virtualized environments from Guha, and thus the combination of Mandagere, Wagener and Guha would disclose the missing limitations from the combination of Mandagere and Wagener, since sharing resources at virtualization environment is very common feature (see [0062] from Guha and [0030] from Mandagere. Note: [0030] from the primary reference Mandagere discusses feature of “some containers requirement for shared access to an associated storage volume” but Mandagere does not explicitly disclose such shared storage volume is newly created or not).
Regarding to Claim 13, Claim 13 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 19, Claim 19 is a product claim corresponds to system Claim 5 and is rejected for the same reason set forth in the rejection of Claim 5 above.
Claims 6, 14 and 20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Mandagere et al. (US 20200264930 A1, hereafter Mandagere) in view of Wagener et al. (US 20170093622 A1, hereafter Wagener) and further in view of Shi et al. (CN 107273182 B-English translation provided by Google Patents, publication date: 5/15/2020, hereafter Shi) and Laker (US 20150370823 A1).
Regarding to Claim 6, the rejection of Claim 1 is incorporated, the combination of Mandagere and Wagener does not disclose: a request processing component that compares a first amount of storage capacity specified in the storage expansion request to a second amount of storage capacity managed by a VM of the cluster of VMs, wherein the storage expansion component adds the new storage volumes to the respective VMs of the cluster of VMs in response to the first amount of storage capacity being less than the second amount of storage capacity.
However, Shi discloses: a request processing component that compares a first amount of storage capacity to a second amount of storage capacity managed by a VM, wherein the storage expansion component adds the new storage volumes to the respective VMs in response to the first amount of storage capacity being less than the second amount of storage capacity (see [0077]-[0078]; “an extended target memory resource M _ new”, “judging whether C _ new is smaller than the maximum resource C _ max of the current distributable CPU and M _ new is smaller than the maximum resource M _ max of the current distributable memory … if yes, expanding the system CPU resource to C _ new and expanding the system memory resource to M _ new … and the current allocable memory maximum resource M _ max is obtained by subtracting the current occupied memory resource total amount from the memory resource total amount of the utilization cloud resource pool”. The current allocable memory maximum resource M_max is reasonable to be considered as claimed second amount of storage capacity to be managed by a VM).
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 creation of storage volumes for the containers or virtual machines from the combination of Mandagere and Wagener by including comparing the amount of storage size to be extend to current maximum available storage resource to determine whether the extension operation is able to be performed or not from Shi, since it would provide a mechanism of avoiding requesting too many resources than available for the resource extension operation (see [0077]-[0078] from Shi).
In addition, Laker discloses: a first amount of storage capacity specified in the storage expansion request (see [0087]; “sends to the file server 9002 a request to expand disk space for a filesystem. In some embodiments, the request includes the amount of disk space to add to the filesystem”).
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 virtual volume creation request from the combination of Mandagere, Wagener and Shi by including a request for specifying total amount of disk space to be added for storage expansion operation from Laker, and thus the combination of Mandagere, Wagener, Shi and Laker would disclose the missing limitations from the combination of Mandagere and Wagener, since it would provide a more specific storage expansion request to specify amount of storage space is required to add according to user’s need (see [0087] from Laker).
Regarding to Claim 14, Claim 14 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.
Regarding to Claim 20, Claim 20 is a product claim corresponds to system Claim 6 and is rejected for the same reason set forth in the rejection of Claim 6 above.
Claims 7 and 15 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Mandagere et al. (US 20200264930 A1, hereafter Mandagere) in view of Wagener et al. (US 20170093622 A1, hereafter Wagener) and further in view of Bhat et al. (US 20250077259 A1, hereafter Bhat).
Regarding to Claim 7, the rejection of Claim 1 is incorporated, the combination of Mandagere and Wagener does not disclose: wherein the storage expansion component adds the new storage volumes to a subset of the cluster of VMs, the subset of the cluster of VMs comprising less than all of the cluster of VMs, and wherein respective VMs in the subset of the cluster of VMs share a common configuration.
However, Bhat discloses: wherein the storage expansion component adds the new storage volumes to a subset of the cluster of VMs, the subset of the cluster of VMs comprising less than all of the cluster of VMs, and wherein respective VMs in the subset of the cluster of VMs share a common configuration (see [0151]; “select a subset of virtual machines (e.g., “app-one-3”) on which a selected modification action (e.g., “Start,” “Stop,” Attach a Disk ”) may be performed. Once the user has indicated that such a modification should be performed, the controller 602 can then formulate and send a command of the modification action to the computing environment 610 to execute the selected modification action”).
It would have been obvious to one with ordinary skill, in the art before the effective filing date of the claim invention, to modify storage volume modification requests from the combination of Mandagere and Wagener by including selecting only a subset of virtualized environments for performing storage volumes modification operations from Bhat, and thus the combination of Mandagere, Wagener and Bhat would disclose the missing limitations from the combination of Mandagere and Wagener, since it would provide a customized storage volume modification request according to customer’s need (see [0151] from Bhat).
Regarding to Claim 15, Claim 15 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.
Claim 8 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Mandagere et al. (US 20200264930 A1, hereafter Mandagere) in view of Wagener et al. (US 20170093622 A1, hereafter Wagener) and further in view of Krinke, II et al. (US 9600376 B1, hereafter Krinke).
Regarding to Claim 8, the rejection of Claim 1 is incorporated, the combination of Mandagere and Wagener does not disclose: a volume provisioning component that assigns respective ones of the new storage volumes to respective volume failure domains associated with the cloud computing system in response to the configuration component facilitating the updating of the topology configuration of the cluster of VMs.
However, Krinke discloses: a volume provisioning component that assigns respective ones of the new storage volumes to respective volume failure domains associated with the cloud computing system in response to the configuration component facilitating the updating of the topology configuration (see lines 64-7 of cols. 10-11; “In response to detecting that a volume is added to or deleted from the storage system, the backup administrator can manually update storage configuration information, e.g., manually add or delete the volume to/from the appropriate disk pools. Alternatively, the change in storage topology can be automatically reflected in the disk pools”).
Note: according to Applicant’s specification, particularly, “the volume provisioning component 410 can assign respective ones of the new storage volumes 40, 42 to volume failure domains (e.g., diskpools) associated with an underlying computing cluster” from [0041], the claimed “failure domains” are actually certain disk pools instead of its plain meaning related to failure or fail/error.
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 new created virtual volume management from the combination of Mandagere and Wagener by including assigning new created volumes to disk pools to reflect corresponding topology changes from Krinke, and thus the combination of Mandagere, Wagener and Krinke would disclose the missing limitations form the combination of Mandagere and Wagener, since it would provide a consistent disk/volume configuration on both of topology structure and resource pool (see lines 64-7 of cols. 10-11 from Krinke).
Claim 9 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Mandagere et al. (US 20200264930 A1, hereafter Mandagere) in view of Wagener et al. (US 20170093622 A1, hereafter Wagener) and further in view of Shaw et al. (US 20200034333 A1, hereafter Shaw).
Regarding to Claim 9, the rejection of Claim 1 is incorporated and further the combination of Mandagere and Wagener discloses: wherein the configuration component freezes the topology configuration of the cluster of VMs by implementing a lock mechanism (see [0035] from Wagener; “If the topology of the automation system 10 is altered … the topology part to be processed is locked exclusively on the central FDI server 11. The possible alterations to the topology include, in particular, adding and deleting field devices 13 and shifting field devices 13 to another location in the topology. During this time, no other user can alter the topology in this region. In this state, the central FDI server 11 does not allow access to the selected part of the topology, neither for reading nor for writing”)
The combination of Mandagere and Wagener does not disclose: freezes the topology configuration by submitting a request to an application programming interface (API) associated with the cluster of VMs.
However, Shaw discloses: implementing a lock mechanism by submitting a request to an application programming interface (API) (see [0034]; “The lock daemon 516 can then communicate with the centralized lock server 550 by making calls to a Centralized Lock API. Through the API, the lock daemon 516 can execute a lock request, an unlock request, and/or a lock break request”).
It would have been obvious to one with ordinary skill, in the art before the effective filing date of the claim invention, to modify locking topology when there is operation would cause change in the topology from the combination of Mandagere and Wagener by including submitting a lock request to API for locking an object from Shaw, and thus the combination of Mandagere, Wagener and Shaw would disclose the missing limitations from the combination of Mandagere and Wagener, since API is well-known and understood mechanism to achieve intercommunication between two computing programs with pre-defined specification.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
Lowery (US 20100185827 A1) discloses: the system may also create a new root disk file 148, at step 3, that contains the common blocks (e.g., block 2 and block 4), and create new differencing disks for each virtual machine 140, 142, 144 (see [0019]).
Nakamura et al. (US 20130219136 A1) discloses: amount of cache capacity can be used by each of the VMs is a value which is obtained by dividing the performance total value by the number of VMs (see [0097]. Note: although [0097] is saying “the upper limit value of the cache capacity which can be used by each of the VM clone volumes is a value which is obtained by dividing the performance total value by the number of VM clone volumes”, “the number of VM clone volumes” is actually the number of VM clones)
Joshi et al. (US 20140012940 A1) discloses: for each virtual machine 2108A-N, the amount of cache storage it receives can be calculated as Capacity of VM-1 shares=(VM-1 shares/total active VM shares) Cache Capacity, where the total “active” VM shares are the total number of shares allocated to total number of powered-on virtual machines 2108A-N (see [0175]-[0181]).
Gandhi et al. (US 7478099 B1) discloses: a lock is placed on the production database 120 to prevent any data from being written to the production database 120 during the storing of the dataset 160 in the staging database 110. Upon successful completion of this store, the lock is released (see lines 40-44 of col. 12).
Mettu et al. (US 20180218024 A1) discloses: wherein the management server is configured to release the lock on the persistent reservation table on each of the plurality of storage nodes responsive to successful completion of the data access operation request received from the client (see claim 4).
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
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