Detailed Office Action
Claims 1-6, 8-13, and 15-20 are pending and have been fully examined.
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 .
Status of the Claims
Claims 1-6, 8-13, and 15-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103
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 1-6, 8-13, and 15-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Zhou et al. (U.S. Publication No. 2025/0307085 A1), hereinafter referred to as Zhou, in view of Singhal et al. (U.S. Publication No. 2023/0409540 A1).
Regarding Claim 1, Zhou teaches:
A method comprising:
periodically generating snapshots of an original dataset exported as a share to a client to create a chain of snapshots at a computing node, wherein each snapshot of the snapshot chain represents a dataset state of the share; ([0042]; regarding, “The network module 124 may allow the computer 102 to communicate with components of network environments (explained with reference to FIG. 2A and FIG. 2B) via the WAN 104 to obtain the several types of data for the execution of the improved snapshot restoration code 120B. Further, the remote server 108 may store the several types of data and/or functionality, for example, a data backup functionality, a snapshot versioning functionality, and the like to the computer 102. The public cloud 110 and the private cloud 112 may provide on-demand computing resources and/or a cloud data storage to the computer 102 for the execution of the improved snapshot restoration code 120B.”; [0064]; regarding, “the system 202, or an instance of the system 202, for example, the processor 214 may iteratively perform a snapshot generation operation to generate the plurality of snapshots 216. Further, each snapshot of the plurality of snapshots 216 may include at least one respective snapshot object corresponding to the at least one object associated with the file system 210. In an embodiment of the present disclosure, the server 206 may receive the plurality of snapshots 216 from the system 202”; [0049]; regarding, “the restoration operation corresponding to the point-in-time state of the file system stored in the snapshot.”);
restoring a corrupted dataset state of the share to a last known good (LKG) snapshot representing an uncorrupted dataset of the share… ([0066-0068, 0048]; regarding, “The system 202 may include suitable logic, circuitry, interfaces, and/or code that may employ one or more backup and restoration mechanisms to prevent risks, for example, a data loss, a data corruption, a data unavailability, and the like due to disasters.”; [0064]; regarding, “each snapshot of the plurality of snapshots 216 may include at least one respective snapshot object corresponding to the at least one object associated with the file system 210… the plurality of snapshots 216 may corresponds to read-only snapshots. The read-only snapshots are immutable and maintain a constant point-in-time state corresponding to the at least one object associated with the file system 210.”; [0071]; regarding, “the processor 214 may utilize the read-only snapshots to perform the plurality of operations after correlating, based on the reception of the restore command, the file system namespace of the file system 210 with the snapshot namespace of the snapshot, for example, the snapshot 218A of the file system 210. Additionally, or alternatively, the namespace correlation may allow the processor 214 to perform the restoration operation instantly and minimize a downtime of the file system 210 associated with a comparison of the file system 210 and snapshot data of the snapshot, for example, the snapshot 218A to determine changes for the restoration operation.”);
wherein a first phase includes (i) renaming the LKG snapshot of the original dataset, (ii) creating a clone of the LKG snapshot referencing the uncorrupted dataset state of the share; ([0044]; regarding, “With regards to performing the data backup and the restoration operation based on the writable snapshots of the file system or the file system clone techniques there is a need to perform additional operations, for example, completion of the restoration operation before unfreezing the file system, renaming of the writable snapshots, deletion of the determined changes, updating of data pointers to the writable snapshots, and cloning to a new file system name after renaming an initial file system name to the new file system name.”);
and (iii) promoting the clone, wherein promotion of the clone decouples and reverses dependency between the renamed LKG snapshot and the clone, ([0066-0068, 0074]; regarding, “The namespace correlation between the file system namespace of the file system 210 and the snapshot namespace of the snapshot of the file system 210 allows for the instant snapshot restoration of the snapshot by decoupling the restoration of the file system 210 and the individual objects, for example, the object 212A, the object 212B, the object 212C and the object 212D associated with the file system 210.”);
and a second phase includes deleting the original dataset. ([0024, 0061]).
Zhou does not explicitly disclose but Singhal teaches:
restoring… using an atomic transaction administratively applied by the client in two phases, ([0048]; regarding, “Such a system may need a mechanism to ensure atomic transactions among different regions to maintain consistency among the databases when failures or updates occur.”; [0049]; regarding, “The techniques disclosed in the present disclosure may cover different types of restart operations for the existing cross-region replication process, such as replication deletion, and replication prior-snapshot restart.”)
Therefore, it would have been obvious before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to one of ordinary skill in the art to which said subject matter pertains to combine Zhou with the teachings of Singhal. Doing so could increase the throughput and performance of the replication process (Singhal, [0075]).
With regards to Claim 2, Zhou in view of Singhal teaches the method of Claim 1 as cited above. Zhou in view of Singhal further teaches:
wherein the exported share is a distributed share having datasets as a group of shards distributed across a plurality of computing nodes, (Singhal, [0111]; regarding, “When a customer sets up replication, the customer provides the source (or primary) file system (A) 402, target (or secondary) file system (B) 404 and the RPO. A file system is uniquely identified by a file system identification (e.g., Oracle Cloud ID or OCID), a globally unique identifier for a file system. Data is stored in the file storage service (“FSS”) control plane database.”; [0261]; regarding, “infrastructure as a service (IaaS) is one particular type of cloud computing. IaaS can be configured to provide virtualized computing resources over a public network (e.g., the Internet). In an IaaS model, a cloud computing provider can host the infrastructure components (e.g., servers, storage devices, network nodes (e.g., hardware), deployment software, platform virtualization (e.g., a hypervisor layer), or the like).”);
wherein the first phase is applied to each of the shards, (Zhou, Fig. 2B, [0040]; regarding, “Each of the multiple clouds remains a separate and discrete entity, but the larger hybrid cloud architecture is bound together by standardized or proprietary technology that enables orchestration, management, and/or data/application portability between the multiple constituent clouds.”; [0041]; regarding, “various components of the computing environment 100, for example the computer 102, the WAN 104, the EUD 106, the remote server 108, the public cloud 110, and the private cloud 112 may enable an execution of the at least some of the computer code, for example, the improved snapshot restoration code 120B for snapshot restoration.”);
and wherein corruption of the restored dataset state includes a failure to successfully apply the first phase to any of the shards. (Zhou, [0048]; regarding, “The system 202 may include suitable logic, circuitry, interfaces, and/or code that may employ one or more backup and restoration mechanisms to prevent risks, for example, a data loss, a data corruption, a data unavailability, and the like due to disasters. Examples of the disasters include, but are not limited to, hardware failures, malware attacks, natural disasters, human errors, and the like.”; [0098]; regarding, “the restoration data 412 may correspond to the unrestored flag 602 to indicate an unrestored restoration state associated with the at least one object.”).
With regards to Claim 3, Zhou in view of Singhal teaches the method of Claim 2 as cited above. Zhou in view of Singhal further teaches:
wherein in response to a determination that the restored dataset state is corrupt, rolling back application of the first phase for the datasets of each shard in the group. (Singhal, [0088]; regarding, “the state information is about the lifecycle details, details of the delta, and the lifecycle of the resources. The state machines can also track the progress of the replication and work with the data plan to help estimate the time taken for replication. Thus, the state machines can provide status to the users on whether replications are proceeding on time and the health of jobs.”; [0233]; regarding, “As a result of both scenarios (i.e., software bugs or customer errors), the operator may need to abandon the current snapshot of the replication and restart from a prior good snapshot that has gone through the replication successfully.”).
With regards to Claim 4, Zhou in view of Singhal teaches the method of Claim 2 as cited above. Zhou in view of Singhal further teaches:
wherein a portion of data of at least one shard is moved to an archival storage tier, wherein Change File Tracking (CFT) is used to track the archived data, and wherein the CFT is used to restore the archived data of the at least one shard to the computing node during the first phase. (Singhal, [0060]; regarding, “A “blob,” in certain embodiments, may refer to a data type for storing information (e.g., a formatted binary file) in a database.”; [0072]; regarding, “The constructed coherent information is put into a blob format and transferred to a remote side (e.g., a target region) using object interface, for example Object Store (to be described later), such that the target file system on the remote side can download immediately and start applying the information once it detects the transferred information on the object interface.”; [0090]; regarding, “Object Store 260 (also referred to herein as “Object”) in FIG. 2 is an object storage service (e.g., Oracle's object storage service) allowing to read blobs, and write files for archival purposes.”)
With regards to Claim 5, Zhou in view of Singhal teaches the method of Claim 1 as cited above. Zhou in view of Singhal further teaches:
wherein the original dataset is maintained to comply with recovery point objectives. (Singhal, [0076]; regarding, “FIG. 1 depicts an example concept of recovery point objective (RPO) and recovery time objective (RTO)”; [0112]; regarding, “Source (A) control plane (CP-A) 410 orchestrates creating system snapshots periodically at an interval (smaller than RPO)”).
With regards to Claim 6, Zhou in view of Singhal teaches the method of Claim 1 as cited above. Zhou in view of Singhal further teaches:
wherein after the first phase, the client selects and copies data from the original filesystem to another dataset prior to the second phase. (Singhal, [0071]; “The users can resume either from the last point-in-time on the source side prior to the triggering event, or resume from the latest changes on the target side… the source file system, after performing a failover and then failback, can serve the workload again.”);
(Zhou, [0083]; regarding, “the processor 214 may receive the restore command 406 corresponding to a selected snapshot object associated with the snapshot namespace 404. In an embodiment of the present disclosure, the processor 214 may receive the user input to select the at least one snapshot object, for example, the snapshot object 220D.”).
Claims 8-13 and 15-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 under the same grounds of rejection as Claims 1-6 respectively.
Response to Arguments
Applicant's arguments filed 02/12/2026 have been fully considered.
Applicant’s arguments with respect to the previous rejection under 35 U.S.C. 103 on independent Claim 1, and similarly Claims 8 and 15, have been considered and a new grounds of rejection has been provided addressing the newly claimed matter. See the above detailed rejection of the newly recited subject matter.
Newly cited reference Zhou teaches periodically generating snapshots of an original dataset exported as a share to a client to create a chain of snapshots at a computing node, wherein each snapshot of the snapshot chain represents a dataset state of the share; restoring a corrupted dataset state of the share to a last known good (LKG) snapshot representing an uncorrupted dataset of the share…
Conclusion
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/M.D.G./Examiner, Art Unit 2113
/BRYCE P BONZO/Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2113