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 now pending in the application under prosecution and have been examined.
The specification has not been checked to the extent necessary to determine the presence of all possible minor errors.
The specification should be amended to reflect the status of all related application, whether patented or abandoned. Therefore, applications noted by their serial number and/or attorney docket number should be updated with correct serial number and patent number if patented.
The first instance of all acronyms or abbreviation should be spelled out for clarity, whether or not considered well known in the art.
In the response to this Office action, the Examiner respectfully requests that support be shown for language added to any original claims on amendment and any new claims. That is, indicate support for newly added claim language by specifically pointing to page(s) and line numbers in the specification and/or drawing figure(s). This will assist the Examiner in prosecuting this application.
37 C.F.R. § 1.83(a) requires the Drawings to illustrate or show all claimed features.
Applicant must clearly point out the patentable novelty that they think the claims present, in view of the state of the art disclosed by the references cited or the objections made, and must also explain how the amendments avoid the references or objections. See 37 C.F.R. § 1.111(c).
Double Patenting
The nonstatutory double patenting rejection is based on a judicially created doctrine grounded in public policy (a policy reflected in the statute) so as to prevent the unjustified or improper timewise extension of the “right to exclude” granted by a patent and to prevent possible harassment by multiple assignees. A nonstatutory double patenting rejection is appropriate where the claims at issue are not identical, but at least one examined application claim is not patentably distinct from the reference claim(s) because the examined application claim is either anticipated by, or would have been obvious over, the reference claim(s). See, e.g., In re Berg, 140 F.3d 1428, 46 USPQ2d 1226 (Fed. Cir. 1998); In re Goodman, 11 F.3d 1046, 29 USPQ2d 2010 (Fed. Cir. 1993); In re Longi, 759 F.2d 887, 225 USPQ 645 (Fed. Cir. 1985); In re Van Ornum, 686 F.2d 937, 214 USPQ 761 (CCPA 1982); In re Vogel, 422 F.2d 438, 164 USPQ 619 (CCPA 1970); and In re Thorington, 418 F.2d 528, 163 USPQ 644 (CCPA 1969).
A timely filed terminal disclaimer in compliance with 37 CFR 1.321(c) or 1.321(d) may be used to overcome an actual or provisional rejection based on a nonstatutory double patenting ground provided the reference application or patent either is shown to be commonly owned with this application, or claims an invention made as a result of activities undertaken within the scope of a joint research agreement. A terminal disclaimer must be signed in compliance with 37 CFR 1.321(b).
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Claims 1-20 are rejected on the ground of nonstatutory double patenting as being unpatentable over claims 1-20 of U.S. Patent No. 12,131,046. Although the claims at issue are not identical, they are not patentably distinct from each other because:
Claim 1 (application)
Claim 1 (US 12,131,046)
A method, comprising:
receiving a request to split a clone volume from a parent volume whose data is stored within objects of an object store, wherein splitting the clone volume includes copying parent objects of the parent volume to create child objects;
creating child object identifiers for the child objects;
populating a reverse map with reverse map entries, wherein a reverse map entry includes a child object identifier for a child object and a parent object identifier of a parent object to copy as the child object; and
instructing the object store to copy the parent objects as the child objects for splitting the clone volume from the parent volume, wherein the reverse map is used to verify that the child objects are successfully created with valid data.
A method for splitting a clone volume from a parent volume whose data is stored in an object store using one or more parent objects, comprising:
utilizing a transfer map to track mappings of selectively created child object identifiers used to subsequently copy the one or more parent objects to create child objects corresponding to the child object identifiers;
performing a consistency point phase, wherein for each child object identifier: setting an object state for a corresponding child object to a copy pending state; and populating a reverse map with a reverse map entry includes at least one of a child object identifier for the child object, a parent object identifier of a parent object to copy as the child object a sequence number of the parent object, or an identifier of the parent object; and
traversing the transfer map to copy the one or more parent objects as the child objects for splitting the clone volume from the parent volume, wherein the reverse map is used to verify that the child objects are successfully created with valid data.
2. The method of claim 1, comprising: populating the reverse map entry with a sequence number of the parent object.
3. The method of claim 1, comprising: populating the reverse map entry with an identifier of the parent object.
Claim 1 of the instant US Patent 12,131,046 further recite, as highlighted and underlined: populating a reverse map with a reverse map entry includes at least one of a child object identifier for the child object, a parent object identifier of a parent object to copy as the child object, a sequence number of the parent object, or an identifier of the parent object. However, features that appear to be distinctive are recited in claim 2 and 3 of the instant application.
As such, Claim 1 of US Patent 12,131,046, encompassing the features of claims 1-3, anticipate claim 1-3 of the instant application.
The computing device comprising a memory storing instructions for performing a method for splitting a clone volume from a parent volume of claim 10 of US Patent 12,131,046 encompasses, in scope, to the computing device comprising: a memory storing instructions; and a processor coupled to the memory, the processor configured to execute the instructions to perform operation, recited in claim 16-18 of the instant application, therefore anticipates claim 16-18 of the instant application.
The non-transitory machine readable medium comprising instructions for performing a method of claim 15 of US Patent 12,131,046 encompasses, in scope, to the non-transitory machine readable medium comprising instructions for performing a method, recited in claim 10-12 of the instant application, therefore anticipates claim 10-12 of the instant application.
Dependent claims 2-9, 11-14, and 16-20 of US Patent 12,131,046 recite features either verbatim or in wording variation corresponding to Claims 4-9, 13-15, and 19-20 of the instant application.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
KUMAR (US 10853186 B1) teaches data copy management featuring: respective instance of a data management (DM) plugin to create copies of data generated in connection with the operation of the applications; DM tool for copying and indexing clones or snapshots corresponding to data that is to be copied, the DM tool mapping the data copies to the region(s) of the database and file system volume which is/are impacted by the changes, the mapping being a reverse mapping process in which the DM tool uses the ID of changed blocks.
US 20180307705 A1 (BENDER et al) teaching In an approach to maintain data integrity in a computer data storage system, a clone management table is generated for a clone file tree that includes a relationship between at least one parent file and a clone file. The parent file is restored by: (i) determining that the parent-child relationship exists between the parent file and the clone file based on an entry in the clone management table, (ii) restoring data blocks in the parent file to the file system based on an analysis of an entry in the clone management table for the parent file and an identification of data blocks included in the clone file, and (iii) generating a new instance of the parent file based on the data blocks included in the file system and the entry in the clone management table for the clone file tree.
US 20160292041 A1 (BENDER et al) teaching an approach to backup and restore one or more clone file trees, one or more processors generate a clone management table. One or more processors record a clone management information in the clone management table about each clone file. To backup a clone file, one or more processors update the clone management information, and store one or more data blocks that are in the clone file trees. To restore a clone file, one or more processors analyze a clone management information and restore one or more data blocks in the clone file. To restore a clone file parent, one or more processors analyze a clone management information and restore one or more data blocks in the clone file parent. To restore a clone file tree, one or more processors analyze a clone management information and restore one or more data blocks in the clone file tree.
US 8825602 B1 (DESAI et al) teaching object-based storage environments, the system comprising: a snapshot module programmed to: take a first snapshot, at a first time, of a set of partitions that store data managed by a file system on a set of object storage devices, the set of object storage devices comprising a plurality of storage devices; take a second snapshot, at a second time, of the set of partitions that store data managed by the file system on the set of object storage devices;distribute, among the plurality of storage devices, a resource load for performing data protection by, for each storage device in the plurality of storage devices, identifying change-tracking information stored in the storage device instead of using centralized change-tracking information from a metadata server to identify at least one object that changed between the first and second times.
US 20220398115 A1 (XIANG et al) teaching Primary metadata for a child clone maps a logical block address (LBA) for data in a data region of the child clone to a physical sector address (PSA) for data in the data region of the child clone. At least a portion of primary metadata for a parent clone of the child clone is copied into archival metadata for the child clone. In response to a read request, data is returned from the child clone, parent clone, or another ancestor of the child clone based on whether or not a read request LBA is within the primary metadata for the child clone, or within the archival metadata.
US 20210103499 A1 (Alluboyina et al) teaching snapshot of a storage volume created by orchestrating layer implementing a multi-role application that is provisioned with virtualized storage wherein the snapshot of the application may be created and used to rollback or clone the application.
US 10042908 B2 (Kuchibhotla et al) teaching system, method, and computer program product for a unified system for implementing clones. The unified system includes the appropriate infrastructure to create, maintain, and administer clones and supporting data sources in the computing environment. In addition, a user interface is provided that is capable of visually displaying relationships and lineages of sources and clones in the system. The user interface provides functionality to select any given object, and to trace its parent-child relationships to highlight its related parent and/or child source/clone.
US 7334094 B2 (FAIR) teaching clone splitting technique enables efficient online splitting of blocks shared between a parent virtual volume (vvol) and a clone in accordance with a shared block splitting procedure executing on a storage system.
US 10853186 B1 (KUMAR ) teaching a reverse mapping process comprising using respective IDs of changed blocks to identify a portion of the index affected by changes associated with the changed blocks, and the respective IDs are obtained from a storage array at which the dataset is stored; and updating the index to map to the changed blocks.
US 8527544 B1 (COLGROVE et al) teaching computing system comprising: a data storage medium; a first table comprising a plurality of entries, each of which includes a mapping of a virtual address to a physical location in the data storage medium; a second table comprising a plurality of entries, each of which includes a reverse mapping of a physical address in the data storage medium to one or more virtual addresses; and a data storage controller configured to: identify one or more entries in the second table, wherein said one or more entries are identified as corresponding to a given segment.
Contact Information
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to PIERRE MICHEL BATAILLE whose telephone number is (571)272-4178. The examiner can normally be reached Monday - Thursday 7-6 ET.
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/PIERRE MICHEL BATAILLE/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2138