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 .
DETAILED ACTION
Continued Examination
A request for continued examination under 37 CFR 1.114, including the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e), was filed in this application after final rejection. Since this application is eligible for continued examination under 37 CFR 1.114, and the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e) has been timely paid, the finality of the previous Office action has been withdrawn pursuant to 37 CFR 1.114. Applicant's submission filed on April 27, 2026 has been entered.
Response to Amendment
Claims 4, 12, 20 are canceled. Claims 1-3, 5, 8, 9-11, 13, and 17 have been amended.
Claims 1-3, 5-11, 13-23 are pending.
NOTE:
It is noted that any citations to specific, pages, columns, lines, or figures in the prior art reference and any interpretations of the reference should not be considered to be limiting in any way. A reference is relevant for all it contains and may be relied upon for all that it would have reasonably suggested to one having ordinary skill in the art. See MPEP 2123.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 102
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 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 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.
(a)(2) the claimed invention was described in a patent issued under section 151, or in an application for patent published or deemed published under section 122(b), in which the patent or application, as the case may be, names another inventor and was effectively filed before the effective filing date of the claimed invention.
Claims 1-3, 5-11, 13-23 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) (a)(2) as being anticipated by Keremane et. al., U.S Patent Pub No. 2017/0116097 (hereinafter Keremane).
Regarding Claim 1, Keremane teaches a method, comprising: reading, by a first storage system controller and a second storage system controller (Fig.1,4; Para15-16 "a first storage controller, within a first storage cluster, may have a disaster recovery relationship with a second storage controller" Para53-54), first heartbeat data from a first region of a storage device assigned to the first storage system controller and second heartbeat data from a second region of the storage device assigned to a second storage system controller (Fig.4-7; Para48-19, 53-54 "The first storage controller 402 may store heartbeat status information, such as a series of sequence numbers indicative of progress of the first storage controller 402, state transition information, operating state information, etc., within a first memory section 404") ; and
determining, for the first storage system controller and the second storage system controller, a corresponding state of the storage device based on the first heartbeat data and the second heartbeat data (Fig.4-7; Para15-16-cluster storage system contains first and second controller continuously monitoring storage status using heartbeat; Para53-54 "Responsive to the current heartbeat status information indicating a failure of the first storage controller 402, the second storage controller 410 may automatically implement a switchover operation to takeover processing client I/0 requests previously processed by the first storage controller 402 before the failure." Para56-57 "In this way, both the first memory section 504 and the first disk mailbox 516 are used to convey health information of the first storage controller 502.", Para63-65).
wherein the corresponding state of the storage device indicates whether the storage device is claimed by a particular storage system controller (Fig.4-7; Para51-52 “heartbeat status information may also be obtained from the first disk mailbox corresponding to the storage device owned by the first storage controller, but not the second storage controller.” Ownership corresponds to claiming status of the storage device Para59-60).
Regarding claim 2, Keremane teaches all the limitations of the base claims as outlined above.
Further, Keremane teaches wherein determining the corresponding state of the storage device comprises determining, that the particular storage system controller claims the storage device based on a detected change to heartbeat data corresponding to the particular storage system controller(Fig.4-7; Para53-54 "Responsive to the current heartbeat status information indicating a failure of the first storage controller 402, the second storage controller 410 may automatically implement a switchover operation to takeover processing client I/0 requests previously processed by the first storage controller 402 before the failure." Para56-57, 63-65).
Regarding claim 3, Keremane teaches all the limitations of the base claims as outlined above.
Further, Keremane teaches wherein, the heartbeat data is written by to the particular storage system controller to the storage device (Fig.4-7, Para53-54, Para56-57, 63-65,67).
Regarding claim 5, Keremane teaches all the limitations of the base claims as outlined above.
Further, Keremane teaches wherein determining the corresponding state of the storage device comprises determining, that the storage device is unclaimed based on a lack of detected changes in the first heartbeat data and the second heartbeat data, or an unhealthy status indicated in heartbeat data corresponding to the particular storage system controller(Fig.4-7, Para53-54, Para56-57 "In this way, both the first memory section 504 and the first disk mailbox 516 are used to convey health information of the first storage controller 502.", Para63-65).
Regarding claim 6, Keremane teaches all the limitations of the base claims as outlined above.
Further, Keremane teaches further comprising initiating, a claim of the storage device in response to determining that the storage device is unclaimed(Fig.4-7, Para53-54, Para56-57, Para63-65).
Regarding claim 7, Keremane teaches all the limitations of the base claims as outlined above.
Further, Keremane teaches wherein reading the first heartbeat data and the second heartbeat data is performed using one or more non- write-exclusive read operations (Fig.4-7, Para53-54 "The second storage controller 410 may perform remote direct memory access (RDMA) read operations to the first memory section 404 to obtain current heartbeat status information of the first storage controller 402." Para64-65).
Regarding claim 8, Keremane teaches all the limitations of the base claims as outlined above.
Further, Keremane teaches further comprising determining whether to perform a failover based on messaging information exchanged between the first storage system controller and the second system storage controller (Fig.4-7; Para53-54, 56-57 "Responsive to the current heartbeat status information and/or the second current heartbeat status information indicating a failure of the first storage controller 502, the second storage controller 510 may automatically implement a switchover operation to takeover processing client I/0 requests previously processed by the first storage controller 502 before the failure" Para63-65).
Regarding claims 9-11, 13-19, 21-23, Keremane teaches these claims according to the reasoning set forth in claim 1-3,5-8.
Response to Arguments
Applicants arguments, filed April 27, 2026, with respect to claims 1, 9, and 17 have been fully considered and they are not persuasive.
The Applicant argues Keremane fails to teach “wherein the corresponding state of the storage device indicates whether the storage device is claimed by a particular storage system controller.” The Examiner respectfully disagrees. Keremane teaches first and second controller storing heartbeat status information in storage and the status information reflects the ownership of a particular storage device by a controller (Fig.4-7; Para51-52 “heartbeat status information may also be obtained from the first disk mailbox corresponding to the storage device owned by the first storage controller, but not the second storage controller.” Ownership corresponds to claimed status of the storage device Para 53-54 “The second storage controller 410 may store heartbeat status information, such as a series of sequence numbers indicative of progress of the second storage controller 410, state transition information, operating state information, etc., within a second memory section 412 “Para56-57 Para59-60).
Therefore, Keremane renders these claims unpatentable.
Conclusion
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TASNIMA . MATIN
Primary Examiner
Art Unit 2135
/TASNIMA MATIN/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2135
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