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 .
General Remarks
This communication is considered fully responsive to Applicant’s Application filed 03/15/2024.
Application filed: 03/15/2024
Claims:
Claims 1-20 are pending.
Claims 1, 10, and 19 are independent.
Claims 1, 6, 10, 13, 14 and 16 are amended.
Continuity/Priority Data:
This Application claims priority to India Application No. IN202341068292 filed 10/11/2023.
Response to Arguments
Applicant's arguments filed 08/07/2025 have been fully considered but they are not persuasive.
Applicant argues that the flexible cloud namespace (FCN) of the application is not the same as the hosts of the prior art.
Examiner respectfully disagrees with Applicant’s assertions. Applicant argues the Office Action (OA) does not establish the equivalence of “hosts” and the recited FCNs.
Applicant argues paragraph 0037 of their specification to show how hosts and FCNs are distinguishable. Paragraph 0037 states the FCNs allows users to purchase cloud computing capacity in small increments and break the barrier of current host-based consumption model and create an illusion of elastic capacity of cloud consumers. This paragraph attempts to show what the FCN is but it does not. It shows, at a high level, what the FCN will allow a client to do, but not what the FCN actually is.
Examiner would like to point out paragraph 0044. Paragraph 0044 of Applicant’s specification states, “In some embodiments, an FCN is a logical consumption construct with compute, storage and networking resources in place to allow deploying production grad applications within a tenant selected region without any knowledge about underlying hardware or software infrastructure.” This paragraph provides a description for what the FCN is and how it may perform in some embodiments but not all embodiments.
Applicant is attempting to import parts of the specification into the claims without actually using these aspects of the specification within the claims to provide greater clarity and understanding of the FCN as it is recited within the claims. If the Applicant wants Examiner hold the definition and meaning of FCN as it is recited in paragraph 0044 of the specification and/or what is implied in paragraph 0037, Examiner encourages Applicant to incorporate such ideas into the claims.
As such, at present, the teachings of the prior art cover the claimed limitations as they are currently stated.
Applicant’s arguments, see Applicant’s amendments, filed 08/07/2025, with respect to the rejection(s) of claim(s) 6 under 35 U.S.C. 102 have been fully considered and are persuasive to overcome the prior rejection. However, upon further consideration, a new ground(s) of rejection is made in view of U.S. Patent Application No. 2016/0269239 A1 to Ashby, JR et al. (“Ashby”).
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 102
The following is a quotation of the appropriate paragraphs of 35 U.S.C. 102 that form the basis for the rejections under this section made in this Office action:
A person shall be entitled to a patent unless –
(a)(2) the claimed invention was described in a patent issued under section 151, or in an application for patent published or deemed published under section 122(b), in which the patent or application, as the case may be, names another inventor and was effectively filed before the effective filing date of the claimed invention.
Claims 1-5, 7-14 and 16-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(2) as being anticipated by U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2022/0318062 to Parmar et al. ("Parmar').
As to claim 1, Parmar discloses:
a computer-implemented method comprising:
monitoring resource utilizations in resource capacity profiles of flexible cloud namespaces (FCNs) (Fig. 1, Hosts, 114, 174) in a software-defined data center (SDDC) (Fig. 1, On-Prem Network, 102; Cloud Network, 104; ¶0020, ¶0027, ¶0039 – Parmar teaches monitoring resource usage of the hosts);
comparing the resource utilizations in the resource capacity profiles with resource utilization thresholds set for the resource capacity profiles (¶0045 – Parmar teaches determining (i.e., comparing) if a resource is above/below are threshold); and
scaling resource capacities in the resource capacity profiles of the FCNs based on comparisons of the resource utilizations for the resource capacity profiles with resource utilization thresholds set for the resource capacity profiles (¶0049, ¶0050 – Parmar teaches establishing min and max thresholds for certain resources for the hosts (i.e., CPU, memory, storage) and then for rapid scaling mode, EWMA weights for CPU and memory are set to 50% (scale out) and 10% (scale in) which allows for more aggressive scaling).
As to claim 2, Parmar discloses:
computer-implemented method of claim 1,
wherein the resource capacity profiles of the FCNs include compute capacity profiles and storage capacity profiles (Fig. 1, Cloud Network, 104, ¶0020) (¶0044, ¶0045, ¶0049 – Parmar teaches uses of CPU and memory min and max thresholds (i.e., capacity profiles) of hosts).
As to claim 3, Parmar discloses:
computer-implemented method of claim 1,
wherein monitoring the resource utilizations includes monitoring the resource utilizations in the resource capacity profiles of the FCNs (Fig. 1, Host, 174) using CPU and memory counters in the SDDC (Fig. 1, Cloud Network, 104, ¶0020) (¶0044, ¶0045, ¶0049 – Parmar teaches monitoring CPU and memory usage as compared to min and max thresholds).
As to claim 4, Parmar discloses:
computer-implemented method of claim 1,
further comprising
employing a stream processing platform with brokers (Fig. 1, Autoscaler Engine, 178) and consumers (Fig. 1, Cloud Infrastructure, 176) to process messages related to the resource utilizations in the SDDC (Fig. 1, ¶0039 of Parmar).
As to claim 5, Parmar discloses:
computer-implemented method of claim 4,
further comprising
calculating elastic weighted moving average (EWMA) values for the resource utilizations in the resource capacity profiles of the FCNs (Table 2, ¶0046, Equation 1, Equation 2 of Parmar).
As to claim 6, Parmar discloses:
computer-implemented method of claim 5,
wherein the EWMA values for each resource are calculated using:
Scale-in-EWMA=(1−scale-in-weight)*scale-in-EWMA+scale-in-weight*resource-current-demand (¶0046, Equation 2 of Parmar (scale-down)); and
Scale-out-EWMA=(1-scale-out-weight)*scale-out-EWMA+scale-out-weight*resource-current-demand (¶0046, Equation 1 of Parmar),
where scale-in-weight and scale-out-weight are fixed values, scale-in-EWMA and scale-out-EWMA are previously EWMA values, and resource-current-demand is a current resource utilization (Table 2, ¶0049-¶0052 of Parmar).
As to claim 7, Parmar discloses:
computer-implemented method of claim 5,
further comprising:
publishing the EWMA values along with capacity profile identifiers and flexible cloud namespace identifiers to the stream processing platform (¶0044 of Parmar); and generating scaling recommendations based on the published EWMA values (Table 2, ¶0046, Equation 1, Equation 2 of Parmar).
As to claim 8, Parmar discloses:
computer-implemented method of claim 1,
wherein scaling the resource capacities in the resource capacity profiles of the FCNs includes scaling the resource capacities in the resource capacity profiles of the FCNs in terms of FCN units, wherein each FCN unit includes specified amount of resources (Fig. 2A-C of Parmar; ¶0044, ¶0045, ¶0049 – Parmar teaches uses of CPU and memory min and max thresholds (i.e., capacity profiles) of hosts).
As to claim 9, Parmar discloses:
computer-implemented method of claim 1,
wherein each of the FCNs includes a plurality of virtual machines (Fig. 1, VMs, 112B of Parmar).
As to claim 10, similar rejection as to claim 1.
As to claim 11, similar rejection as to claim 2.
As to claim 12, similar rejection as to claim 3.
As to claim 13, similar rejection as to claim 4.
As to claim 14, similar rejection as to claim 5.
As to claim 16, similar rejection as to claim 7.
As to claim 17, similar rejection as to claim 8.
As to claim 18, similar rejection as to claim 9.
As to claim 19, similar rejection as to claim 1.
As to claim 20, similar rejection as to claims 5 and 7.
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 may not be obtained though the invention is not identically disclosed or described as set forth in section 102 of this title, if the differences between the subject matter sought to be patented and the prior art are such that the subject matter as a whole would have been obvious at the time the invention was made to a person having ordinary skill in the art to which said subject matter pertains. Patentability shall not be negatived by the manner in which the invention was made.
Claims 6 and 15 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2022/0318062 to Parmar et al. ("Parmar') in view of U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2016/0269239 A1 to Ashby, JR. et al. (“Ashby”).
As to claim 6, Parmar discloses:
computer-implemented method of claim 1.
Ashby discloses what Parmar does not expressly disclose.
Ashby discloses:
wherein the predefined amount of compute and storage resources for each FCN unit is based on a capacity profile selected from the group consisting of a general-purpose profile (Abstract – Ashby teaches applying a selected resource configuration from the plurality of resource configurations to the first resource to prevent the first resource from deviating from the predetermined threshold range.), a memory-optimized profile (¶0029 – Ashby teaches The CML may include models for a variety of platforms, resources, virtualization products, operating systems, processor architectures, and/or memory configurations.) and a compute-optimized profile (¶0056 – Ashby teaches In certain configurations, CPU resource score is a computed value of the capacity of a target system to deliver CPU computing power to applications, taking into account unique scalability characteristics of the host hardware, operating system, and virtualization environment).
Parmar and Ashby are analogous arts because they are from the same field of endeavor with respect to providing network resources.
Before the effective filing date, it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art to incorporate resource utilization configurations as discussed in Ashby with system of scaling network resources as discussed in Parmar by adding the functionality of Ashby to the system/method of Parmar in order to provide a selected resource configuration from the plurality of resource configurations to the first resource to prevent the first resource from deviating from the predetermined threshold range (Ashby, Abstract).
As to claim 15, similar rejection as to claim 6.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
U.S. Patent No. 10,067,949 B1 to Stacey et al.: Systems and methods are provided for adopting and controlling storage resources of a distributed file system using an acquired namespace metadata service.
PgPUB 2020/0242086 A1 to Mamidi et al.: teaches providing a global namespace abstraction for the distributed cluster.
THIS ACTION IS MADE FINAL. 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 TAYLOR A ELFERVIG whose telephone number is (571)270-5687. The examiner can normally be reached Monday (10:00 AM CST) - Friday (4:00 PM CST).
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If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Oscar Louie can be reached at (571) 270-1684. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/TAYLOR A ELFERVIG/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2445