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 .
Claims 1-20 are pending.
Note: For claims 8-20, the claimed “one or more computer-readable storage media” is being interpreted in light of special definition provided in specification at paragraph 0011.
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, 3, 8, 10, 14, 16 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Hallur US 20210034423, in view of Murthy US 20180019969.
For claims 1, 8 and 14, Hallur discloses:
A computer program product comprising:
one or more computer-readable storage media; and program instructions stored on the one or more computer-readable storage media (par. 0024) to perform operations comprising:
receiving an indication that a checkpointed state of a container running an application providing at least one of a set of critical services or a set of non-critical services was transferred from a source host node to a target host node (par. 0073: “…container orchestration program 101 generates a replica container corresponding to the unhealthy container and deploys the replica on another computing device…[and] mounts the volume on the new worker node such that newly created and/or replicated application containers can resume running at their previous state prior to the termination.”); and
responsive to receiving the indication, directing a migration helper located on the target host node to restore and run the container running the application providing the at least one of the set of critical services or the set of non-critical services on the target host node without interruption of the set of critical services based on the checkpointed state of the container transferred from the source host node (par. 0073: “…container orchestration program 101… deploys the replica on another computing device… where stateful containers are terminated and restarted on a different worker node, container orchestration program 101 mounts the volume on the new worker node such that newly created and/or replicated application containers can resume running at their previous state prior to the termination.”)
Hallur fails to explicitly disclose “and an internal IP address of the container that did not change during migration to the target host node”.
However, in a related field, Murthy discloses containers maintaining an assigned IP address when moved from node to node (par. 0031). It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill before effective filing date of claimed invention to have introduced Murthy’s teachings alongside Hallur. The motivation would have been utilizing well-known method of IP address preservation to overcome burden associated with network/service IP reconfiguration following migration of service/container between nodes.
For claims 3, 10 and 16, Hallur-Murthy discloses:
The computer program product of claim 14, wherein the operations further comprise:
directing a migration helper located on the source host node to checkpoint a current state of the container running the application providing the at least one of the set of critical services or the set of non-critical services to form the checkpointed state of the container (Hallur, par. 0073: “…container orchestration program 101 generates a replica container corresponding to the unhealthy container and deploys the replica on another computing device…[and] mounts the volume on the new worker node such that newly created and/or replicated application containers can resume running at their previous state prior to the termination.”); and
directing the migration helper located on the source host node to transfer the checkpointed state of the container running the application providing the at least one of the set of critical services or the set of non-critical services to the target host node based on live migration technology (Hallur, par. 0073).
Claims 2, 4-6, 9, 11-13, 15 and 17-19 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Hallur US 20210034423, in view of Murthy US 20180019969, in view of McGrath US 20130326507.
For claims 2, 9 and 15, Hallur-Murthy discloses:
The computer program product of claim 14, but fails to disclose “wherein the operations further comprise:
directing a network helper located on the target host node to update a routing table with a new external floating IP address of the container that changed during the migration to the target host node ensuring that future requests for the set of non-critical services are routed to the target host node.”
However, in a related field, McGrath discloses a container 325 migrated between systems updating its external DNS parameter as part of the migration process (par. 0047, 0059 and 0068). It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill before effective filing date of claimed invention to have introduced McGrath’s teachings alongside Hallur-Murthy. The motivation would have been to allow clients devices to locate service/applications hosted by migrated container (McGrath, par. 0024, 0025, 0068).
For claims 4, 11 and 17, Hallur-Murthy-McGrath discloses:
The computer program product of claim 14, wherein the operations further comprise:
directing a network helper located on the source host node to generate a new external floating IP address for the container in accordance with a container network interface standard (McGrath, par. 0047, 0059 and 0068); and
directing the network helper located on the source host node to transfer the new external floating IP address for the container to the target host node (McGrath, par. 0047, 0059 and 0068).
For claims 5, 12 and 18, Hallur-Murthy-McGrath discloses:
The computer program product of claim 14, wherein the operations further comprise:
the container includes the internal IP address that does not change (Murthy, par. 0031: Disclosure of containers maintaining an assigned IP address when moved from node to node) and an external floating IP address that does change during the migration from the source host node to the target host node, the external floating IP address is based on a container network interface standard of the container orchestration environment (McGrath, par. 0047, 0059 and 0068: Disclosure of a container 325 migrated between systems updating its external DNS parameter as part of the migration process).
The combination (specifically McGrath was previously relied upon for its teaching of maintaining an external floating IP address) fails to disclose “receiving a request from a client device user to initiate the migration of the container running the application that provides the at least one of the set of critical services or the set of non-critical services corresponding to an entity from the source host node to the target host node in a container orchestration environment”.
However, McGrath is also relied upon for its teaching of an administrator configuring system to migrate containers upon triggering conditions (par. 0055). It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill before effective filing date of claimed invention to have introduced McGrath’s teachings alongside the combination. The motivation would have been to reduce resource load on an overburdened node (McGrath, par. 0055).
For claims 6, 13 and 19, Hallur-Murthy-McGrath discloses:
The computer program product of claim 18, wherein the set of critical services utilizes the internal IP address that does not change (Murthy, par. 0031: Discloses containers maintaining an assigned IP address when moved from node to node) and the set of non-critical services utilizes the external floating IP address that does change during the migration from the source host node to the target host node (McGrath, par. 0047, 0059 and 0068).
Claims 7 and 20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Hallur US 20210034423, in view of Murthy US 20180019969, in view of Brooker USP 11943093.
For claims 7 and 20, Hallur-Murthy discloses:
The computer program product of claim 14, wherein the checkpointed state of the container includes current execution state, memory state of the container (Hallur, par. 0059: State includes contents of memory and results of internal operations).
But fails to teach “[wherein the checkpoints state…includes] and network connections of the container” However, in a related field, Brooker teaches migration of stateful networks connections of a VM instance between nodes (col. 30, ll 18-63). It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill before effective filing date of claimed invention to have introduced Brooker’s teachings alongside the combination. The motivation would have been to gracefully recover network connections after transitioning VM instances between devices (Brooker, col 29, ll 52-55).
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to CLAYTON R WILLIAMS whose telephone number is (571)270-3801. The examiner can normally be reached M-F 10:00am - 6:00pm.
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/CLAYTON R WILLIAMS/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2443
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