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 .
Detail Action
On 07/30/2024, Application 18/788,894 is filed with claims 1-20.
This is a Non-Final Action.
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)(1) the claimed invention was patented, described in a printed publication, or in public use, on sale, or otherwise available to the public before the effective filing date of the claimed invention.
Claims 1-13 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) as being anticipated by Kanteiti US 2016/0048351.
18/788,894
Kanteiti US 2016/0048351
Claim 1
A storage system comprising:
a memory storing instructions; and
a processor communicatively coupled to the memory and configured to execute the instructions to:
Kanteiti teaches each one of the Nodes has a processor and local memory for storing and executing Node software, a connection to physical storage media, and one or more network connections including at least a dedicated high bandwidth and low latency communication path to other Nodes; p0055-p0056.
virtually copy a source virtual machine image into a block object to form a file of a block-object-based file system configured to present the virtually copied virtual machine image through a file-based protocol to a virtual machine host.
Kanteiti teaches copying and back virtual data; p0004-p0016;
Kanteiti teaches a new file system clone object is immediately thin provisioned on the primary node and exposed by the PART to the user (host), and a new file system clone object is also thin provisioned on the restore node (which is consistent with the system's usual process of mirroring requests to the restore node.
Kanteiti Fig. 11 p0101-p0110;
Claim 2
The storage system of claim 1, wherein the virtually copying the source virtual machine image into the block object comprises virtually copying data blocks of the source virtual machine image into the block object utilizing existing physical copies of the data blocks.
Kanteiti Fig. 11 p0101-p0110;
Kanteiti teaches Parts 310 distribute file to respective disks 103. Fig. 7 p0088-p0091.
Claim 3
The storage system of claim 1, wherein the source virtual machine image is a block volume.
Kanteiti teaches file and block storage layer (file system, block volume); p0047.
Claim 4
The storage system of claim 1, wherein the source virtual machine image is a block volume of a virtual volume (VVOL).
Kanteiti teaches the data associated with each virtual machine including its operating system image files, application files and associated data are stored in one or more files arranged in a directory tree within a single file system tree; p0101.
Claim 5
The storage system of claim 4, wherein all block volumes in the VVOL are virtually copied to block objects within the block object-based file system.
Kanteiti Fig. 11 p0101-p0110;
Kanteiti Fig. 7 p0088-p0091.
Claim 6
The storage system of claim 1, wherein the source virtual machine image is a file within a host-managed file system.
Claim 7
The storage system of claim 6, wherein the processor is configured to execute the instructions to convert a source virtual machine configuration file within the host-managed file system into an additional file of the block-object-based file system.
Kanteiti Fig. 11 p0101-p0110;
Kanteiti Fig. 7 p0088-p0091.
Claim 8
The storage system of claim 6, wherein the host-managed file system comprises a virtual machine file system (VMFS), a new technology file system (NTFS), or a Linux-based file system.
Kanteiti Fig. 11 p0101-p0110;
Kanteiti Fig. 7 p0088-p0091.
Claim 9
The storage system of claim 1, wherein the source virtual machine image is of a virtual machine implemented with VMware, Hyper-V, Xen, QEMU, KVM, or MacOS virtualization framework.
Kanteiti Fig. 11 p0101-p0110;
Claim 10
The storage system of claim 1, wherein the virtual copying is initiated by a host using available operations of the storage system to virtually copy from blocks of a volume to block objects.
Kanteiti Fig. 11 p0101-p0110;
Kanteiti Fig. 7 p0088-p0091.
Claim 11
The storage system of claim 1, wherein the processor is further configured to execute the instructions to virtually copy a set of source virtual machine images to form a set of block objects of the block-object-based file system.
Kanteiti Fig. 1 p0054-p0056;
Kanteiti Fig. 11 p0101-p0110;
Kanteiti Fig. 7 p0088-p0091.
Claim 12
The storage system of claim 1, wherein the processor is configured to execute the instructions to add the file of the block-object-based file system to a managed directory that includes files of a virtual machine, the managed directory configured to provide directory-level storage management functionality to contents of the managed directory as a group.
Kanteiti Fig. 1 p0054-p0056;
Kanteiti Fig. 11 p0101-p0110;
Kanteiti Fig. 7 p0088-p0091.
Claim 13
The storage system of claim 1, wherein the virtual copying of the source virtual machine image into the block object is performed by the storage system in association with a request from a virtual machine platform to offload a cloning or a migration of the virtual machine.
Kanteiti Fig. 1 p0054-p0056;
Kanteiti Fig. 11 p0101-p0110;
Kanteiti teaches Cloning with Thin Provisioning and Background Live Restore. Fig. 13 p0116-p0120;
Kanteiti Fig. 7 p0088-p0091.
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 14-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Kanteiti US 2016/0048351 and Wookey US 2019/0056890.
18/788,894
Kanteiti US 2016/0048351 and Wookey US 2019/0056890
Claim 14
A storage system comprising:
a memory storing instructions; and a processor communicatively coupled to the memory and configured to execute the instructions to:
Kanteiti teaches each one of the Nodes has a processor and local memory for storing and executing Node software, a connection to physical storage media, and one or more network connections including at least a dedicated high bandwidth and low latency communication path to other Nodes; p0055-p0056.
virtually copy images of a virtual machine from a first type of presented storage format to a second type of presented storage format.
Kanteiti Fig. 11 p0101-p0110;
Kanteiti does not specifically teach converting one type of format to another.
Wookey teaches converts the operations into file system operations that are understood by a virtual machine file system; p0014; and these operations includes parameter may typically take such values as monolithicFlat, vmfsSparse, and vmfsRDM, to refer to different corresponding disk types; p0018;
It would have been obvious at the time of the invention for a person of ordinary skill in the art (POSITA) to include Wookey’s teaching with method of Kanteiti in order to store the operating state of the VM.
Wookey teaches cloned copy of the virtual disk file with incremented version number and partition the file that point to the new virtual disk file with updated version the application. See Wookey p0033;
It would have been obvious at the time of the invention for a person of ordinary skill in the art (POSITA) to include Wookey’s teaching with method of Kanteiti in order to reduce the complexity of the virtual disk file.
Claim 15
The storage system of claim 14, wherein: the first type of presented storage format comprises a block volume storing a formatted file system that stores configuration and image files of the virtual machine; and the configuration and image files of the virtual machine are virtually copied to form configuration and image files of the second type of presented storage format.
Kanteiti Fig. 11 p0101-p0110;
Wookey p0014- p0033;
Claim 16
The storage system of claim 14, wherein the first type of presented storage format comprises a virtual machine file system (VMFS).
Kanteiti Fig. 11 p0101-p0110;
Wookey p0014- p0033;
Claim 17
The storage system of claim 14, wherein the second type of presented storage format comprises a file system implemented by the storage system and presented to virtual machine hosts through a file-based protocol.
Kanteiti Fig. 11 p0101-p0110;
Wookey p0014- p0033;
Claim 18
The storage system of claim 17, wherein the virtual copying the images of the virtual machine comprises virtually copying the images of the virtual machine to block objects used to implement the file system.
Kanteiti Fig. 11 p0101-p0110;
Wookey p0014- p0033;
Claim 19
The storage system of claim 14, wherein: the first type of presented storage format comprises a block volume directly containing the images of the virtual machine; the images of the virtual machine are virtually copied to form files of a file system of the second type of presented storage format.
Kanteiti Fig. 11 p0101-p0110;
Wookey p0014- p0033;
Claim 20
A method comprising: receiving, by a storage controller of a storage system, a request to copy a virtual machine from a first presented storage format to a second presented storage format, the second presented storage format being a block-object-based file system;
Kanteiti Fig. 11 p0101-p0110;
Wookey p0014- p0033;
copying, by the storage controller, the virtual machine from the first presented storage format to the block-object-based file system, the copying of the virtual machine comprising copying source configuration data of the virtual machine from the first presented storage format into a first block object to form a first file of the block-object-based file system and virtually copying a source image of the virtual machine from the first presented storage format into a second block object to form a second file of the block-object-based file system; and
Kanteiti Fig. 11 p0101-p0110;
Wookey p0014- p0033;
presenting, by the storage controller, the virtual machine in the second presented storage format to a virtual machine host through a file-based protocol.
Kanteiti Fig. 11 p0101-p0110;
Wookey p0014- p0033;
Related Prior Art
Here is a list of references relate to backing up Virtual Machines:
Spillane US Publication 2018/0364950: Embodiments described herein are related to cloning a volume in a file system. In some embodiments, a directory hard link is used to generate a clone of the root node of the volume. In certain embodiments, upon determining that a file or directory of the clone which comprises a hard link to an index node has been modified, a new object directory is generated beneath a root node of the volume. The index node may be added to the new object directory and one or more files and directories in the volume which link to the index node may be updated to contain symbolic links to the index node in the new object directory. In certain embodiments, a copy-on-write operation is performed in order to copy the file or directory and the new object directory to the clone.
Natanzon US Patent 10,120,925: A computer implemented method for reading signatures corresponding to a portion of data on a virtual machine disk on a production site, wherein reading the signature includes mapping the virtual machine disk offset into a physical storage offset, and reading the signature from the physical storage; sending the signature of the portion of data to a replication site; obtaining a mapping from a virtual disk to a physical disk at the replica site; issuing a command to write a portion of data corresponding to the signature to a the physical storage based on the mapping of the replica of the virtual machine disk on the replication site; determining if the command was successful; and based on a determination that the command was not successful, marking the locations corresponding to the signature for synchronization in a synchronization structure.
Cale US Patent 9,947,300: A musical instrument plectrum having at least two string-engaging regions, an incurvate contact surface on a first side of the plectrum, and an obverse contact surface on a second side of the plectrum. The incurvate contact surface is arranged so that two of the at least two string-engaging regions are noncontiguous with each other..
Contact Information
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to PENG KE whose telephone number is (571)272-4062. The examiner can normally be reached M-F 6:30-5:00.
Examiner interviews are available via telephone, in-person, and video conferencing using a USPTO supplied web-based collaboration tool. To schedule an interview, applicant is encouraged to use the USPTO Automated Interview Request (AIR) at http://www.uspto.gov/interviewpractice.
If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Kevin Young can be reached at (571) 270-3180. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
Information regarding the status of published or unpublished applications may be obtained from Patent Center. Unpublished application information in Patent Center is available to registered users. To file and manage patent submissions in Patent Center, visit: https://patentcenter.uspto.gov. Visit https://www.uspto.gov/patents/apply/patent-center for more information about Patent Center and https://www.uspto.gov/patents/docx for information about filing in DOCX format. For additional questions, contact the Electronic Business Center (EBC) at 866-217-9197 (toll-free). If you would like assistance from a USPTO Customer Service Representative, call 800-786-9199 (IN USA OR CANADA) or 571-272-1000.
PENG KE
Primary Examiner
Art Unit 2194
/PENG KE/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2194
Prosecution Insights