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 office correspondence is in response to the application filed on December 22, 2025. Claims 1-4, 10-13, and 20 are amended.
Claims 1-20 are pending.
Response to Arguments
Applicant’s arguments with respect to claims 1-20 have been considered but are moot in new ground of rejection.
Applicant argues combination of NOSKOV and Panitsas fail to discloses the newly amended limitation of rejecting the assignment of the resource to the compute node based on determining that at least one capacity consumption metric associated with compute capacity consumed by the resource exceeds a corresponding available capacity metric of the compute node.
Examiner respectfully disagrees and additional reference was cited to disclose the limitation. NOSKOV discloses service are deployed at different quality of service (QOS) levels associated with different instance priorities. A manifest for a service specifies a first QoS level associated with a first QoS level priority value. A first deployment object is created for deploying instances of the service at the first QoS level, and is associated with a first combined priority value determined based on the priority of the service and the first QoS level priority value. Multi-tenant environments allow multiple services to share underlying resources of a compute cluster. Multi-tenancy provides tenants a cost-effective way to share resources in order to lower total cost of ownership while still isolating their applications and individual deployments from other tenants. To ensure that no single tenant monopolizes resources or causes resource starvation of other tenants, cluster resources are allocated to deployed services in a prioritized manner. For example, spare resources may be assigned to any service deployed on the cluster. However, when a higher priority service experiences a surge and requests additional resources, cluster resources may be reallocated from a lower priority service to the higher priority service through a preemption and/or eviction process. Assigning different QoS levels to different instances of a service may enable a resource provider to meet service level agreements (SLAs) by guaranteeing resource allocations and performance targets for at least one QoS level. In order to provide the same service at a plurality of QoS levels with different priorities, a tenant may generate a plurality of templates for the same service, each of the plurality of templates corresponding to a different QoS level of the service.
Panitsas discloses aggregate a metric of the first metric type for the version of the application and the metric for the cluster of computing devices to establish a third metric. The processor can determine the third metric exceeds a threshold for the first metric type for the cluster of computing devices, the threshold proportional to a capacity of the cluster of computing devices for the first metric type. The processor can increase a size of the cluster of computing devices. Collecting metrics such as current memory utilization and/or a value of central processing unit (CPU) utilization of the cluster. The server may determine whether the cluster has the capacity to store and process the new version of the application at the cluster based on the received metrics from the cluster and metrics of the new version of the application. Responsive to determining the cluster does not have the capacity for the new version of the application, the server may increase the size of the cluster, such as by adding a new computing device to the cluster, to cause the cluster to have the capacity to store and process the new version of the application, and redirect the network communication to a destination desired. Therefore, after carefully reviewing the prior arts, the rejection is sustained for the claim.
The claimed invention fails to clearly state, when the assignment of the resource is rejected, and the assignment of the resource is redirected to another compute node in the compute cluster for evaluation with sufficient capacity for the resource in found.
For at least the foregoing reasons, claims 10, and 20 recite similar features to claim 1. Claims 2-9, and 11-19 each depend from one of the respective independent claims, and rendered obvious by the combination of the prior arts Ramakrishnan, Phillips, and Ludwig for at least the same reasons by virtue of their dependencies. Examiner respectfully sustains the rejections.
Furthermore, as it is Applicant's right to continue to claim as broadly as possible their invention, it is also the Examiner's right to continue to interpret the claim language as broadly as possible. It is the Examiner's position that the detailed functionality that allows Applicant’s invention to overcome the prior art used in the rejection, fails to differentiate in detail how these features are unique. By the rejection above, the applicant must submit amendments to the claims in order to distinguish over the prior art use in the rejection that discloses different features of Applicant's claimed invention.
Applicant has not yet submitted claims drawn to limitations, which distinguishes over the prior art or to significantly narrow definition/scope of the claims and supply arguments commensurate in scope with the claims implies the Applicant intends broad interpretation be given to the claims. It is requested that Applicant clearly and distinctly define the claimed invention.
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 (i.e., changing from AIA to pre-AIA ) 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, 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.
The factual inquiries for establishing a background for determining obviousness under 35 U.S.C. 103 are summarized as follows:
1. Determining the scope and contents of the prior art.
2. Ascertaining the differences between the prior art and the claims at issue.
3. Resolving the level of ordinary skill in the pertinent art.
4. Considering objective evidence present in the application indicating obviousness or nonobviousness.
Claims 1-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Andrey NOSKOV (US Publication 2024/0419500) hereafter NOSKOV, in view of Panitsas et al. (US Publication 2024/0095073) hereafter Panitsas, in further view of Einkauf et al. (US Publication 2021/0392185) hereafter Einkauf.
As per claim 1, NOSKOV discloses a system comprising: a compute cluster comprising multiple compute nodes, a compute node in the compute cluster comprising: at least one hardware processor (abstract, paragraph 0016, 0026); and at least one memory storing instructions that cause the at least one hardware processor of the node to perform operations comprising: evaluating an assignment of a resource for a service to the compute node (paragraphs 0027-28, 0031: identify and adjust services based on resource utilization and policies), the evaluating of the assignment comprise: determining one or more capacity consumption metrics associated with compute capacity consumed by the resource (paragraphs 0029, 00031-32, 0063: dynamically adjust the metrics to meet the desired performance and resource requirements); determining one or more available capacity metrics associated with the compute node (paragraphs 0028-29, 0031-32: resource availability with satisfying resource requirement); and managing the one or more capacity consumption metrics with the one or more available capacity metrics (paragraphs 0032-33: when certain conditions are met); and determining whether to confirm the assignment of the resource to the compute node based on the evaluating (paragraphs 0029, 0033, 0039: considering factors/metrics to distribute across nodes accordingly). Although, NOSKOV discloses distributing incoming network traffic of a service within clusters and prioritize deployment based on capacity, but he fails to expressly disclose comparing the one or more capacity consumption metrics with the one or more available capacity metrics.
However, in the same field of endeavor, Panitsas discloses the claimed limitation of comparing the one or more capacity consumption metrics with the one or more available capacity metrics (paragraphs 0106, 0114-117: comparing resources utilization capacity metrics and available threshold).
Accordingly, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to incorporate Panitsass’ teaching with NOSKOV. One would be motivated to manage and comparing resource services based on individual nodes capacity consumption metrics, thus improving the scalability and efficiency of the load balancing.
Although, NOSKOV- Panitsas disclose distributing incoming network traffic of a service within clusters and prioritize deployment based on capacity and comparing the metrics and adjusting such metrics configurations of the cluster, but he fails to expressly disclose rejecting the assignment of the resources based on determining that at least one capacity consumption metric associated with compute capacity consumed by the resource exceeds a corresponding available capacity metric of the compute node.
However, in the same field of endeavor, Einkauf discloses the claimed limitation of rejecting the assignment of the resources based on determining that at least one capacity consumption metric associated with compute capacity consumed by the resource exceeds a corresponding available capacity metric of the compute node (paragraphs 0034, 0059: push custom metrics directly to the monitoring service for removing capacity based upon the policy).
Accordingly, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to incorporate Einkaufs’ teaching with NOSKOV-Panitsas. One would be motivated to identify resource capacity consumption level to either reject and redirect resources to another node or continue to deliver the content to a node with sufficient capacity to reduce latency for seamless communication.
As per claim 2, NOSKOV discloses the system wherein the compute node is a first compute node; and a second compute node in the compute cluster performs the operations confirming the assignment of the resource to the compute node in response to determining that the one or more capacity consumption metrics associated with compute capacity consumed by the resource do not exceed one or more available capacity metrics of the second compute node (paragraphs 0024, 0031-32, 0057).
As per claim 3, NOSKOV-Panitsas discloses the system wherein the operations comprise redirecting the assignment of the resource (paragraph 67). Although, NOSKOV-Panitsas disclose distributing incoming network traffic of a service within clusters and prioritize deployment based on capacity and comparing the metrics and adjusting such metrics configurations of the cluster, but fail to expressly disclose redirecting the assignment of the resource for the service to another compute node in the compute cluster selected based on a round-robin scheme.
However, in the same field of endeavor, Einkauf discloses the claimed limitation of redirecting the assignment of the resource for the service to another compute node in the compute cluster selected based on a round-robin scheme (paragraphs 0033, 0054).
The same motivation that was utilized in the combination of claim 1 applies equally as well to claim 3.
As per claim 4, NOSKOV discloses the system wherein: the compute node is a first compute node in the compute cluster; and a second compute node in the compute cluster evaluates the assignment of the resource to the second compute node in the compute cluster based on the one or more capacity consumption metrics associated with compute capacity consumed by the resource and available capacity information associated with the second compute node (paragraphs 0027-28, 0031).
As per claim 5, NOSKOV discloses the system wherein the operations further comprise: receiving estimated capacity information for the resource from the service, the estimated capacity information comprising one or more estimated capacity consumption metrics, wherein the one or more capacity consumption metrics associated with compute capacity consumed by the resource are determined based on the estimated capacity information (paragraphs 0029, 0033, 0039).
As per claim 6, NOSKOV discloses the system wherein the operations further comprise: storing observed capacity information for the resource, wherein the one or more capacity consumption metrics associated with compute capacity consumed by the resource are determined based on the observed capacity information (paragraphs 0028-29, 0031-32).
As per claim 7, NOSKOV discloses the system wherein the one or more capacity consumption metrics associated with compute capacity consumed by the resource are determined based on a combination of observed capacity information and estimated capacity information, the observed capacity information comprising one or more observed compute capacity consumption metrics of the resource, the estimated capacity information comprising one or more estimated compute capacity consumption metrics (paragraphs 0029, 00031-32, 0063, 0083-85).
As per claim 8, NOSKOV discloses the system wherein the evaluating of the assignment of the resource for the service to the compute node is performed by the compute node based on locally stored capacity information (paragraphs 0028-29, 0031-32).
As per claim 9, NOSKOV discloses the system wherein: the one or more capacity consumption metrics comprise one or more of: an amount of storage space consumed, an amount of memory consumed, a number of threads consumed, CPU utilization, network bandwidth utilization, performed I/0 operations per second, and a number of sockets used; and the one or more available capacity metrics comprise one or more of: an amount of available storage space, an amount of available memory, a number of spawnable computational threads, CPU capacity, available network bandwidth, performable 1/0 operations per second, and a number of available sockets (paragraphs 0028-32, 0052).
Claim 10 is an Independent claim with similar limitation but different in preamble and hence are rejected based on the rejection provided in claim 1.
Claims 11-17 are listed all the same elements of claims 2-8 respectively. Therefore, the supporting rationales of the rejection to claims 2-8 apply equally as well to claims 11-17 respectively.
As per claim 18, NOSKOV discloses the method wherein: the compute node is a first compute node; and the evaluating of the assignment of the resource for the service to the first compute node is performed by a second compute node based on locally stored capacity information (paragraphs 0028-29, 0031-32, 0052).
As per claim 19, NOSKOV discloses the method further comprising: performing, by the second compute node, rebalancing of resource assignments among compute nodes in the compute cluster, the rebalancing comprising transferring the assignment of the resource from the first compute node to a third compute node (paragraphs 0028-29, 0056-57, 0086).
Claim 20 is an Independent claim with similar limitation but different in preamble and hence are rejected based on the rejection provided in claim 1.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
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 FARZANA B HUQ whose telephone number is (571)270-3223. The examiner can normally be reached Monday - Friday: 8:30-5:30 ET.
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If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Emmanuel L Moise can be reached at 571-272-3865. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/FARZANA B HUQ/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2455
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