DETAILED ACTION
This Office action is in response to the amendment of 6/25/26.
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 .
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
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 (i.e., changing from AIA to pre-AIA ) 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 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.
Claim(s) 1, 6-7, 11-12, 16 and 18 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Satoyama et al. (US 2019/0121549 A1) hereinafter Satoyama et al. in view of Tokuda et al. (US 2008/0222214 A1) hereinafter Tokuda et al. in further view of Khan (US 2013/0007346 A1) hereinafter Khan.
Regarding claim 1, Satoyama et al. teaches a non-transitory machine readable medium storing instructions, which when executed by one or more processing resources of a node of storage system, cause the node to:
based on compressibility of a data payload of a write operation received from a client, perform a single input/output (I/O) write operation including writing the data payload in compressed form to a data block associated with a particular block number within persistent block storage (it can be determined that a compression process is to be performed by the FMPK, and when a write request is transmitted in this manner, the I/O processing program calculates an in-pool page number corresponding to virtual page and a block number corresponding to the page number Paragraph [0145]).
Satoyama et al. does not appear to explicitly teach, however, Tokuda et al. teaches after completion of the single I/O write operation, initiate journaling of an operation header, containing information identifying the write operation and the particular block number, to a journal storage medium (a journal is created each time the storage system processes the write I/O processing request to the journal acquisition storage device, which includes processing order number and time, a write destination address and the write data Paragraphs [0151]-[0154]); and prior to completion of the journaling, acknowledge receipt of the write operation to the client (the controller may notify completion of the write I/O process to the host computer without waiting for an end of the journal creation process Paragraphs [0139], [0235]).
The disclosures of Satoyama et al. and Tokuda et al., hereinafter ST, are analogous art to the claimed invention because they are in the same field of endeavor of write command processing and/or journaling in memory systems.
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, having the teachings of ST before them, to modify the teachings of Satoyama et al. to include the teachings of Tokuda et al. since both ST teach processing writes in conjunction with journaling. Therefore it is applying a known technique (initiate journaling of the write data and block number and notifying the host of completion of the write I/O process [0139], [0154] of Tokuda et al.) to a known device (performing compression of write data of Satoyama et al.) ready for improvement to yield predictable results (the write data and block number is journaled and the host has been notified that the write I/O has completed), KSR, MPEP 2143.
ST does not appear to explicitly teach, however, Khan teaches based on compressibility of a data payload of a write operation received from a client meeting a compressibility threshold (to determine whether or not input data is incompressible, the incompressibility detection module is configured to determine a compressibility value of the input data and determine whether data is incompressible based at least in part on the compressibility value compared to a compressibility threshold Paragraph [0030]).
The disclosures of ST and Khan, hereinafter STK, are analogous art to the claimed invention because they are in the same field of endeavor of compressing and/or journaling data in memory systems.
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, having the teachings of STK before them, to modify the teachings of ST to include the teachings of Khan since both STK teach journaled data and/or compression of data for efficient storage. Therefore it is applying a known technique (compressing data based on its compressibility meeting a threshold [0030] of Khan) to a known device (data associated with an I/O request is compressed based on access frequency as taught by Satoyama) ready for improvement to yield predictable results (data is determined to be compressed or remain uncompressed based on its compressibility meeting a threshold of Khan et al. ), KSR, MPEP 2143.
Regarding claim 6, STK teaches all of the features with respect to claim 1, as outlined above.
Tokuda et al. further teaches wherein the node comprises a virtual storage system or a commodity computer system in which latency of the journal storage medium is plus or minus 10% of latency of the persistent block storage (journal storage device 31-32 and persistent storage devices 33 are provided from storage volume spaces created by the plurality of physical storage devices Paragraph [0049], that is, the latency of the journal storage device is equal to that of the persistent storage device).
Claims 7 and 12 are rejected under 35 USC 103 for the same reasons as claim 1, as outlined above.
Claim 11 is rejected under 35 USC 103 for the same reasons as claim 6, as outlined above.
Claim 16 is rejected under 35 USC 103 for the same reasons as claim 6, as outlined above.
Regarding claim 18, ST teaches all of the features with respect to claim 16, as outlined above.
Satoyama et al. further teaches wherein the persistent block storage comprises a collection of one or more SSDs (FPMK is a solid state drive (SSD) Paragraph [0058]).
Claim(s) 17 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over STK in further view of Singh (US 10,152,481 B1) hereinafter Singh.
Regarding claim 17, STK teaches all of the features with respect to claim 16, as outlined above.
STK does not appear to explicitly teach, however Singh teaches wherein the journal storage medium comprises a solid-state drive (SSD) (SSD may be used for large journals instead of NVRAMS Column 11, Lines 26-30).
The disclosures of STK and Singh, hereinafter STKS, are analogous art to the claimed invention because they are in the same field of endeavor of write command processing and/or journaling in memory systems. Because both STKS teach the use of journaling in different storage devices (ex. the journal storage devices of Tokuda comprising disks), it would have been obvious to one skilled in the art to substitute one type of memory for another to achieve the predictable result of availability of the journal stored in the particular type of memory as disclosed by Singh, in this case, SSD (KSR, MPEP 2143).
Claim(s) 19-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over STK in further view of Trika (US 2019/0042143 A1) hereinafter Trika.
Regarding claim 19, STK teaches all of the features with respect to claim 18, as outlined above.
STK does not appear to explicitly teach, however Trika teaches further comprising a file system layer and an intermediate storage layer interposed between the file system layer and the persistent block storage, and wherein the intermediate storage layer performs the single I/O write operation (Fig. 8 depicts application layers 802, which includes a file-system layer and additional intermediate layers (i.e., RAID driver layer and/or NVMe driver layer) that sits between the file-system layer and data storage devices in the bottom layer Paragraph [0065] which requests to perform I/O operations flow through before reaching a given data storage device [0033]).
The disclosures of STK and Trika, hereinafter STKT, are analogous art to the claimed invention because they are in the same field of endeavor of write command processing and/or journaling in memory systems.
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, having the teachings of STKT before them, to modify the teachings of STK to include the teachings of Trika since both STKT teach processing writes in conjunction with journaling. Therefore it is applying a known technique (file system layer and an intermediate storage layer between the block storage device [0033], [0065] of Trika) to a known device (performing compression of write data of Satoyama et al.) ready for improvement to yield predictable results (an intermediate storage layer sits between the file-system layer and data storage devices [0033], [0065]), KSR, MPEP 2143.
Regarding claim 20, STKT teaches all of the features with respect to claim 19, as outlined above.
Trika further teaches wherein the intermediate storage layer comprises a redundant array of independent disks (RAID) layer (RAID (Redundant Array of Independent Disks) driver is the intermediate layer [0033], [0065]) and wherein the collection of one or more SSDs is managed by the RAID layer (the data storage device can be an SSD Paragraphs [0031],[0034]).
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 2-5, 8-10, 13-15 are objected to as being dependent upon a rejected base claim, but would be allowable if rewritten in independent form including all of the limitations of the base claim and any intervening claims.
Specifically regarding claim 2, “wherein the single I/O write operation further includes writing a packed block header containing an operation header entry corresponding to the write operation to the data block and wherein the instructions further cause the node to: maintain a data structure containing information regarding a plurality of block numbers that are available for single I/O write operations; mark the particular block number within the data structure as being associated with a particular consistency point (CP) active at a time of the single I/O write operation; and prior to performing the single I/O write operation, store information regarding the particular CP within metadata of the packed block header,” is not taught by the prior art. The closest prior art of record is STK, as outlined above, in further view of Subramanian et al. (US 2017/0031772 A1). Subramanian et al. teaches that a file system can maintain an active map of a snapshot, i.e., an image of the claimed consistency. However, neither ST nor Subramanian, individually or in combination, disclose the node to store information regarding a particular CP within metadata of the packed block header prior to performing the single I/O write operation itself, wherein the single I/O write operation involves writing a packed block header containing an operation header entry corresponding to the single write operation.
Claims 3-5 would be allowable at least due to its dependency on claim 2.
Claims 8 and 13 recite substantially similar claim limitations to that of claim 2 and is allowable for the same reasons as discussed above. Claims 9-10 would be allowable at least due to its dependency on claim 8. Claims 14-15 would be allowable at least due to its dependency on claim 13.
Terminal Disclaimer
The terminal disclaimer filed on 6/25/2026 disclaiming the terminal portion of any patent granted on this application which would extend beyond the expiration date of Patents 11861172 and 12169630 has been reviewed and is accepted. The terminal disclaimer has been recorded.
Response to Arguments
Applicant’s arguments with respect to the rejection(s) of claim(s) 1, 7 and 12 under 35 USC 103 have been fully considered and are persuasive. Therefore, the rejection has been withdrawn. However, upon further consideration, a new ground(s) of rejection is made in view of Khan. On page 13 of the Remarks, Applicant argues that while there is teaching in Satoyama regarding whether to perform compression by the FMPK or by the storage controller based on access frequency of the write target page, Satoyama is silent regarding evaluation of the “compressibility of a data payload of a write operation… meeting a predetermined or configurable threshold.” Examiner agrees. However, new prior art Khan teaches whether or not to perform compression by examining the compressibility of a data input against a compressibility threshold. Paragraph [0030] of Khan discusses that another technique to trigger compression, that differs from the triggering event using an access frequency of Satoyama, would be determine a compressibility value of the input data, compare said value to a compressibility threshold to determine if data is incompressible.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
Chatterjee (US 8554734) teaches using a logging journal internal to the storage server can perform an I/O operation that can be completed in parallel resulting in a latency substantially equal to one standard data storage write.
Pawar et al. (US 9542396) teaches managing a transaction log of a file system stored on a non-volatile storage medium, and changes are tracked by looking at the metadata.
Kumar et al. (US 2021/0294515 A1) teaches generating metadata for journal entries for batching.
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 JANE W BENNER whose telephone number is (571)270-0067. The examiner can normally be reached Mon - Thurs (8 AM - 5 PM).
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JANE W. BENNER
Primary Examiner
Art Unit 2131
/JANE W BENNER/ Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2139
