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 .
Remarks
This action is in response to the applicant’s response filed 11 September 2025, which is in response to the USPTO office action mailed 13 June 2025. Claims 1 and 5 are amended. Claims 1-5 are currently pending.
Response to Arguments
With respect to the 35 USC §103 rejections of claims 1-5, the applicant’s arguments are moot in view of a new grounds of rejection, as necessitated by the applicant's amendments.
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 1-5 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) as being anticipated by KARR et al., US 2021/0019237 A1 (hereinafter “Karr”).
Claim 1: Karr teaches an operation management system for a computer, the computer including a backup data store that stores backup data, and a restore computer resource that analyzes the backup data and restores the data, wherein the operation management system, comprising (Karr, [0130] note The storage systems described above may carry out intelligent data backup techniques… the storage systems described above may be configured to examine each backup to avoid restoring the storage system to an undesirable state, [0131] note restore the storage system to a point-in-time, using the retained backups, prior to the point-in-time at which the ransomware infected the storage system):
a central processing unit (CPU) programmed to (Karr, [0059] note storage controller 119A-D may be a CPU):
upon restoring the backup data to a logical volume in a virtual drive, create a plurality of external volumes of one or more high-speed virtual drives accessed at higher speed than the virtual drive (Karr, [0315] note fast durable storage may be used for staging, [0316] note fast durable storage is often used for intent logging, fast completions, or quickly ensuring transactional consistency, where such (and similar) purposes are referred to herein as staging memory, [Fig. 12], [0346] note staging memory may be implemented by one or more virtual drives 1210-1216, [Fig. 17], [0513] note restoring (1706), within the storage provided by the first tier of storage of the virtual storage system 1700, the consistent version of the dataset, [0514] note staging memory provided by virtual drives may be considered a first tier of storage and virtual drives provided by one or more virtual drive servers may be considered a second tier of storage), and
generate a plurality of instances of the restore computer resource that are executed in parallel to store the restored backup data in the external volumes of the one or more high-speed virtual drives (Karr, [Fig. 12], [0346] note staging memory may be implemented by one or more virtual drives 1210-1216, where the one or more virtual drives 1210-1216 store data within respective block-store volumes 1240-1246 and local storage 1220-1226, [0237] note , because the follower storage system (311-38) and the leader storage system (311-40) are independent storage systems, each storage system may be performing some of the steps described above in parallel, [0260] note in order to more rapidly pull data from the cloud-based object storage (432) and into the new cloud computing instances, as each new cloud computing instance can (in parallel) retrieve some portion of the data stored by the cloud-based storage system (403)),
control the restore computer resource instances so the restored data in the external volume is able to be accessed (Karr, [0191] note the storage system can remain online for the pod with little more than a short delay and with no resulting application outages for applications that can issue requests to the remaining online storage systems), and
migrate the restored data from the external volume of the high-speed virtual drive to the logical volume of the virtual drive while maintaining a state where the restored data in the external volume of the high-speed virtual drive is accessible (Karr, [Fig. 17] note 1706, [0373] note Migrating (1706), from the staging memory to more durable data storage provided by a cloud service provider, at least a portion of data stored within the staging memory may be carried out as described above with reference to FIGS. 4-16, where data is migrated from staging memory to a cloud-based object storage).
Claim 2: Karr teaches the operation management system according to claim 1, wherein the restoration of the data by the restore computer resource and the configuration of the logical volume that stores the data are executed in parallel (Karr, [0237] note , because the follower storage system (311-38) and the leader storage system (311-40) are independent storage systems, each storage system may be performing some of the steps described above in parallel, [0260] note in order to more rapidly pull data from the cloud-based object storage (432) and into the new cloud computing instances, as each new cloud computing instance can (in parallel) retrieve some portion of the data stored by the cloud-based storage system (403)).
Claim 3: Karr teaches the operation management system according to claim 1, wherein input/output processing with respect to a host is restarted upon start of the migration (Karr, [0036] note storage array controller 110A-D may include an I/O controller or the like that couples the storage array controller 110A-D for data communications, [0048] note host bus adapters 103A-C may be computer hardware that connects a host system (e.g., the storage array controller) to other network and storage arrays, [0406] note creating highly available infrastructure that can continue running uninterrupted in the event of compute instance failure by switching quickly to another compute instance).
Claim 4: Karr teaches the operation management system according to claim 1, wherein the operation management system selects the high-speed virtual drive that restores the data from among a plurality of virtual drives based on target restoration times, and performance and a usage fee of the virtual drives (Karr, [0249] note decreasing network utilization costs, [0315] note the fast durable storage may be used for staging or transactional commits or for speeding up acknowledgement of operation durability to reduce latency for host requests, [0359] note synchronously replicating storage systems may synchronously replicate updates to the staging memories and perhaps local instance stores within each of their availability zones, to greatly reduce the chance of data loss, while coordinating updates to object stores as a later asynchronous activity to greatly reduce the cost of capacity stored in the object store).
Claim 5: Karr teaches an operation management method for a computer, the computer including a backup data store that stores backup data, and a restore computer resource that analyzes the backup data and restores the data, wherein the operation management method comprising (Karr, [0130] note The storage systems described above may carry out intelligent data backup techniques… the storage systems described above may be configured to examine each backup to avoid restoring the storage system to an undesirable state, [0131] note restore the storage system to a point-in-time, using the retained backups, prior to the point-in-time at which the ransomware infected the storage system):
upon restoring, by an operation management system, the backup data to a logical volume in a virtual drive, creating a plurality of external volumes of one or more high-speed virtual drives accessed at higher speed than the virtual drive (Karr, [0315] note fast durable storage may be used for staging, [0316] note fast durable storage is often used for intent logging, fast completions, or quickly ensuring transactional consistency, where such (and similar) purposes are referred to herein as staging memory, [Fig. 12], [0346] note staging memory may be implemented by one or more virtual drives 1210-1216, [Fig. 17], [0513] note restoring (1706), within the storage provided by the first tier of storage of the virtual storage system 1700, the consistent version of the dataset, [0514] note staging memory provided by virtual drives may be considered a first tier of storage and virtual drives provided by one or more virtual drive servers may be considered a second tier of storage), and
generating a plurality of instances of the restore computer resource that are executed in parallel to store the restored backup data in the external volumes of the one or more high-speed virtual drives (Karr, [Fig. 12], [0346] note staging memory may be implemented by one or more virtual drives 1210-1216, where the one or more virtual drives 1210-1216 store data within respective block-store volumes 1240-1246 and local storage 1220-1226, [0237] note , because the follower storage system (311-38) and the leader storage system (311-40) are independent storage systems, each storage system may be performing some of the steps described above in parallel, [0260] note in order to more rapidly pull data from the cloud-based object storage (432) and into the new cloud computing instances, as each new cloud computing instance can (in parallel) retrieve some portion of the data stored by the cloud-based storage system (403)),
controlling the restore computer resource instances so that the restored data is able to be accessed (Karr, [0191] note the storage system can remain online for the pod with little more than a short delay and with no resulting application outages for applications that can issue requests to the remaining online storage systems); and
a migration processing step of migrating the restored data from the external volume of the high-speed virtual drive to the logical volume of the virtual drive while maintaining a state where the restored data in the external volume of the high-speed virtual drive is accessible (Karr, [Fig. 17] note 1706, [0373] note Migrating (1706), from the staging memory to more durable data storage provided by a cloud service provider, at least a portion of data stored within the staging memory may be carried out as described above with reference to FIGS. 4-16, where data is migrated from staging memory to a cloud-based object storage).
Conclusion
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 Giuseppi Giuliani whose telephone number is (571)270-7128. The examiner can normally be reached Monday-Friday.
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, Kavita Stanley can be reached at (571)272-8352. 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.
/GIUSEPPI GIULIANI/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2153