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 .
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, 5, 7-8, 12, 14-15 and 19 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Lucas et al. (US 2023/0362056 A1) hereinafter Lucas et al. in view of Bondurant (US 2015/0286531 A1) hereinafter Bondurant.
Regarding claim 1, Lucas et al. teaches a storage system comprising:
a plurality of storage nodes (edge devices Paragraphs [0075]-[0076]) comprising a plurality of resources (system components and resources 160 include hardware and software resources [0076], [0082]); and
a storage system controller operatively coupled to the plurality of resources and comprising a processing device (one or more processors that implements the functionalities within the edge computing system Paragraph [0073]) configured to:
receive a storage configuration of the storage system (configuration management information of the system is received Paragraph [0274]-[0281]);
identify resources of the plurality of storage nodes of the storage system that are available within the storage configuration (edge nodes can share configuration and capability information with each other to determine whether or not it should be included as part of a group, and the list may be further refined to include other factors like CPU, memory and available resources Paragraph [0279]);
determine a resiliency for data stored in the storage system (a group objective may include determining a desired level of redundancy or resiliency for each group Paragraph [0336]); and
generate at least one resiliency group within the storage system based on the available resources in the storage configuration of the storage system and the resiliency for data stored in the storage system (logical groups may be formed based the management requirements and/or QoS criteria (such as resiliency) for each group Paragraph [0006]).
Lucas et al. not appear to explicitly teach, however, Bondurant et al. teaches that the resiliency for data is a minimum resiliency, and generate at least one resiliency group within the storage system based on the minimum resiliency for data stored in the storage system (storage management module can provide redundancy parameters such as an overall minimum redundancy (OMR) parameter to assist in making decisions in selection of donor drives for rebuilding Paragraphs [0031]-[0033]). Bondurant et al. further teaches that the resources associated with a node are a set of storage devices (storage resources 106 include physical storage devices such as hard disk drives and solid state drives Paragraph [0015]).
The disclosures of Lucas et al. and Bondurant et al., hereinafter LB, are analogous art to the claimed invention because they are in the same field redundancy/resiliency in data storage 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 LB before them, to modify the teachings of Lee et al. to include the teachings of Bondurant et al. since both LB teach maintaining resiliency requirements for data. Therefore it is applying a known technique (generating a group based on a minimum resiliency for data [0031]-[0033] of Bondurant et al.) to a known device (storage system configuration based on resiliency requirements of Lucas et al.) ready for improvement to yield predictable results (configuring storage system based on a minimum resiliency requirement [0031]-[0033] of Bondurant et al.), KSR, MPEP 2143.
Regarding claim 5, LB teaches all of the features with respect to claim 1 as outlined above.
Lucas et al. further teaches wherein the processing device is further configured to: generate a compute resiliency group for the set of storage nodes in the storage configuration (the ECP system enables performance improves and resiliency at the network’s edge by clustering or grouping similar and dissimilar edge nodes to perform selected functions Paragraph [0102]).
Regarding claim 7, LB teaches all of the features with respect to claim 1 as outlined above.
Lucas et al. further teaches wherein the resources are detachably coupled to the storage nodes of the storage configuration and are relocatable between the storage nodes (a dynamic resource allocation scheme by add/remove resources in real time for particular groups Paragraphs [0295]-[0297]. Note that Bondurant et al. teaches that the resources are storage devices.[0015]).
Claims 8 and 15 are rejected under 35 USC 103 for the same reasons as claim 1, as outlined above.
Claims 12 and 19 are rejected under 35 USC 103 for the same reasons as claim 5, as outlined above.
Claim 14 are rejected under 35 USC 103 for the same reasons as claim 7, as outlined above.
Claim(s) 3, 10 and 17 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over LB in further view of Karr et al. (US 2018/0357019 A1) hereinafter Karr et al.
Regarding claim 3, LB teaches all of the features with respect to claim 1 as outlined above.
LB does not appear to explicitly teach, however, Karr et al. teaches wherein the at least one resiliency group comprises an encoding with three parity shards and up to two storage devices from a storage node of the plurality of storage nodes (techniques can be used such as storing additional shards beyond a fault tolerance (e.g., three parity shards that are usable to recover up to two faults and up to one unit of additional corrupted data) as applied to a local storage device Paragraph [0155]).
LB and Karr et al., hereinafter LBK, are analogous art to the claimed invention because they are in the same field redundancy/resiliency in data storage 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 LBK before them, to modify the teachings of LB to include the teachings of Karr et al. since both LBK teach maintaining resiliency requirements for data. Therefore it is applying a known technique (a group can comprise an encoding with three parity shards of a local storage device [0155] of Karr et al.) to a known device (storage system configuration based on resiliency requirements of Lucas et al.) ready for improvement to yield predictable results (a group can comprise an encoding with three parity shards of a local storage device [0155] of Karr et al.), KSR, MPEP 2143.
Claims 10 and 17 are rejected under 35 USC 103 for the same reasons as claim 3, as outlined above.
Claim(s) 4, 11 and 18 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over LB in further view of Slik (US 2016/0062837 A1) hereinafter Slik.
Regarding claim 4, LB teaches all of the features with respect to claim 1 as outlined above.
LB does not appear to explicitly teach, however, Slik teaches wherein to generate the at least one resiliency group, the processing device is configured to: determine whether a threshold number of storage devices in a chassis of the storage configuration have failed; and in response to determining that fewer than the threshold number of storage devices in the chassis have failed, maintain the at least one resiliency group (if a storage system offers a storage resiliency of 30% and has a k of 1000 then the storage shelf/rack can resist a failure of “300” storage devices before the data is lost, which provides advantages such as deferring the rebuilding process until it has reached the threshold Paragraph [0083]).
LB and Slik, hereinafter LBS, are analogous art to the claimed invention because they are in the same field redundancy/resiliency in data storage 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 LBS before them, to modify the teachings of LB to include the teachings of Slik since both LBS teach maintaining resiliency requirements for data. Therefore it is applying a known technique (maintaining a group when fewer than a threshold number of storage devices have failed [0083] of Slik) to a known device (storage system configuration based on resiliency requirements of Lucas et al.) ready for improvement to yield predictable results (the group is maintained, that is, rebuild is deferred when the number of failures in a storage shelf/rack is less than a threshold [0083] of Slik), KSR, MPEP 2143.
Claims 11 and 18 are rejected under 35 USC 103 for the same reasons as claim 3, as outlined above.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 2, 6, 9, 13, 16 and 20 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 to generate the at least one resiliency group, the processing device is configured to: calculate a resiliency for a plurality of encodings for resiliency groups for the storage configuration; and determine a number of parity shards for the at least one resiliency group based on an encoding of the plurality of encodings having a minimum number of parity shards while satisfying the minimum resiliency for data stored in the storage system,” is not taught by the prior art of record. The closest prior art of record is LB in further view of Donlan et al. (US 9959167 B1) which discusses using a data shard and a derived shard to implement parity encoding. However, neither LB nor Donlan, individually or in combination, discloses encodings having a minimum number of parity shards to satisfy the resiliency requirement for data stored, and using this information to determine a number of parity shards for the resiliency group. While one or more reasons are offered above citing reasons that the claims are allowable over the prior art, it is each claim taken as a whole, including interrelationships and interconnections between various claimed elements, which are allowable over the prior art of record and not any individual limitation of a claim. The prior art of LB and Donlan et al., when taken alone or in combination with each other, fail to anticipate and/or make obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art the claimed invention prior to the effective filing date.
Claims 9 and 16 recite substantially similar limitations as claim 2 and would therefore be allowable under the same rationale as claim 2.
Specifically regarding claim 6, “wherein the processing device is further configured to: determine that a number of storage nodes in the storage configuration exceeds a threshold; and split the compute resiliency group into multiple compute resiliency groups, in response to the number of storage nodes exceeding the threshold,” is not taught by the prior art of record. The closest prior art is Lucas et al. which discusses an elastic storage system where edge nodes can be added or removed from the storage configuration. Thus, Lucas et al. teaches detect an addition of one or more storage nodes to the storage configuration, however, is silent with regards to splitting the compute resiliency group into multiple groups when additional storage nodes exceed a particular threshold. While one or more reasons are offered above citing reasons that the claims are allowable over the prior art, it is each claim taken as a whole, including interrelationships and interconnections between various claimed elements, which are allowable over the prior art of record and not any individual limitation of a claim. The prior art of LB, when taken alone or in combination with each other, fail to anticipate and/or make obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art the claimed invention prior to the effective filing date.
Claims 13 and 20 recite substantially similar limitations as claim 6 and would therefore be allowable under the same rationale as claim 6.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
Kanai et al. (US 2024/0241946 A1) teaches creating resilience groups based on a key performance indicator based on resilience requirements.
Lee et al. (US 2021/0382800 A1) teaches formation of resiliency groups made up of multiple storage drives.
Barrell et al. (US 12504898 B1) teaches determining a reliability level of the storage system and whether it exceeds a predetermined reliability level.
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