Response to Amendment
The amendment filed on May 12, 2026 has been entered. Claims 1, 4-12, 15, 19 have been amended, and claims 18 has been canceled. Claim 21 has been added. Claims 1-17, 19-21 are currently pending in the application.
Response to Arguments
35 U.S.C 103
Applicant’s arguments filed with respect to the rejection(s) of claims 1-17, 19-21 under U.S.C 103 have been fully considered and are persuasive. Therefore, the rejection has been withdrawn. However upon further consideration and in light of Applicant’s amendments, new grounds of rejection are made in view of Wahlert (U.S Pub # 20060053147) and Kirshenbaum (U.S Pub # 20110131185).
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 1-4, 8, 10, 12-14, 21 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Lampert (U.S Pub # 20250245190) in view of Bandarupalli (U.S Pub # 20230148158) and in further view of Wahlert (U.S Pub # 20060053147).
With regards to claim 1, Lampert discloses a non-transitory machine-readable storage medium comprising instructions that upon execution cause a system to:
generate a representation of a storage topology comprising a plurality of levels of entities that store data in a computing environment, the plurality of levels of entities comprising a level including storage volumes and a further level including entities that request storage of data in the storage volumes ([0029] create a hierarchy of policies. For example, a tag may be assigned to the identified data object while another tag may be assigned to a bucket into which the data object should be stored. This may cause conflict between tags at different levels);
determine, based on the representation of the storage topology, whether an overlap exists between the first data protection policy and a second data protection policy for a second entity that is a member of a second level of the plurality of levels of entities, the determining of whether the overlap exists comprising determining whether (Lampert [0029] Object storage system 101 may have rules in place for handling conflicts between tags at different levels. In one example, the rules may indicate that the more robust of the two ILM policies associated with the conflicting tags should be used. In another example where two data protection policies are in conflict, the rules may indicate that the policy resulting in greater data protection should be used for the data object); and
Lampert does not disclose however Bandarupalli discloses:
receive a request to add a first data protection policy for a first entity that is a member of a first level of the plurality of levels of entities, the first data protection policy specifying duplication of first data for the first entity ([0176] Applications can specify any new policies that are available to the application. [0178] policies can be of different types. For example, policies can define sets of rules for storage such as backup);
based on determining that the overlap exists between the first data protection policy and the second data protection policy, initiate an action to reduce data duplication sprawl ([0176] a lower level policy is superseded by a conflicting or overlapping higher level policy (or policy of a common type) and not vice versa).
It would have been obvious for one of ordinary skill in the art before the date the current invention was effectively filed to have modified Lampert by Bandarupalli to identify overlaps between deduplication operations.
One of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to make this modification in order so a processor can identify, for each of the first and second policy types, one or more policies enabled for enforcement at each of the hierarchical levels and apply a rule that, when plural policies of a common policy type are enabled for enforcement at different hierarchical levels (Bandarupalli [0020]).
Wahlert discloses:
a data interaction relationship exists between the first entity at the first level and the second entity at the second level ([0123] detecting overlap of data sources contained in two or more protected groups), and
the first entity is indirectly protected by the second data protection policy at the second level of the storage topology ([0124] when it is determined that a protectable object associated with the selected Namespace Element is contained in an existing protect group (i.e., overlap). The protectable object of the overlapping data source).
It would have been obvious for one of ordinary skill in the art before the date the current invention was effectively filed to have modified Lampert and Bandarupalli by Wahlert to detect objects that may be in overlapping data protection policies.
One of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to make this modification in order to determine a relationship between a first namespace and a second namespace (Wahlert [0016]).
With regards to claim 2, Lampert further discloses:
receive information of the entities in the plurality of levels of entities from one or more inventory managers that manage inventories of entities (Lampert [0024] object storage system managing entities); and
generate the representation of the storage topology based on the received information ([0024, 0033] divide storage system among entities).
With regards to claim 3, Lampert further discloses:
wherein the generating of the representation of the storage topology comprises identifying which entities use which storage volumes ([0025] each tenant stores respective data objects in respective buckets).
With regards to claim 4, Lampert further discloses:
wherein the plurality of levels of entities further comprises a third level including an entity that requests storage of data in a storage volume of the storage volumes, the entity in the third level to execute within a given entity in the further level, wherein the generating of the representation of the storage topology comprises identifying the given entity in which the entity in the third level executes ([0032] tags at a lower level may be a subset of tags at a higher level).
With regards to claim 8, Lampert does not disclose however Wahlert discloses:
wherein determining that the overlap exists comprises determining that the first entity at a higher level in the storage topology is indirectly protected by the second data protection policy at a lower level in the storage topology ([0124] if an overlap is detected, a user may be provided with the option of excluding the protectable object of the overlapping data source from the current protected group, or removing the data source containing conflicted protectable object causing the overlap from the existing protected group and adding it to the current protected group).
It would have been obvious for one of ordinary skill in the art before the date the current invention was effectively filed to have modified Lampert and Bandarupalli by Wahlert to detect objects that may be in overlapping data protection policies.
One of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to make this modification in order to determine a relationship between a first namespace and a second namespace (Wahlert [0016]).
With regards to claim 10, Lampert does not disclose however Bandarupalli discloses:
Wherein the action to reduce data duplication sprawl comprises creating the first data protection policy and removing the second data protection policy ([0176] a lower level policy is superseded by a conflicting or overlapping higher level policy (or policy of a common type) and not vice versa).
It would have been obvious for one of ordinary skill in the art before the date the current invention was effectively filed to have modified Lampert by Bandarupalli to identify overlaps between deduplication operations.
One of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to make this modification in order so a processor can identify, for each of the first and second policy types, one or more policies enabled for enforcement at each of the hierarchical levels and apply a rule that, when plural policies of a common policy type are enabled for enforcement at different hierarchical levels (Bandarupalli [0020]).
With regards to claim 12, Lampert does not disclose however Wahlert discloses:
wherein the second data protection policy partially protects the first data for the first entity ([0124] if an overlap is detected, a user may be provided with the option of excluding the protectable object of the overlapping data source from the current protected group, or removing the data source containing conflicted protectable object causing the overlap from the existing protected group and adding it to the current protected group).
It would have been obvious for one of ordinary skill in the art before the date the current invention was effectively filed to have modified Lampert and Bandarupalli by Wahlert to detect objects that may be in overlapping data protection policies.
One of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to make this modification in order to determine a relationship between a first namespace and a second namespace (Wahlert [0016]).
With regards to claim 13, Lampert further discloses:
detect a topology change that results in a changed arrangement of entities in the plurality of levels of entities ([0033, 0044] change tags that assigns policies to tags that affect data storage in buckets);
generate an updated representation of the storage topology based on the topology change ([0029] hierarchy);
identify a given data protection policy for a given entity that is a member of the of the plurality of levels of entities after the topology change ([0029] tags associating policy with entities);
determine, based on the updated representation of the storage topology, whether an overlap exists between the given data protection policy and a further data protection policy for another entity that is a member of the plurality of levels of entities after the topology change ([0029] determine policy conflict).
Lampert does not disclose however Bandarupalli discloses:
based on determining that the overlap exists between the given data protection policy and the further data protection policy, initiate a further action to reduce data duplication sprawl ([0176] higher level policy supersedes the lower level policy).
It would have been obvious for one of ordinary skill in the art before the date the current invention was effectively filed to have modified Lampert by Bandarupalli to identify overlaps between deduplication operations.
One of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to make this modification in order so a processor can identify, for each of the first and second policy types, one or more policies enabled for enforcement at each of the hierarchical levels and apply a rule that, when plural policies of a common policy type are enabled for enforcement at different hierarchical levels (Bandarupalli [0020]).
With regards to claim 14, Lampert further discloses:
wherein the topology change is identified in a topology refresh triggered based on any one or more of: a creation of a recovery point, a failover of an entity, a movement of an entity, a change in assignment of an entity to a group, or a change in a physical topology of the computing environment ([0033] tenant may request a tag reassignment or change from administrator).
With regards to claim 21, Lampert does not disclose however Wahlert discloses:
wherein the first data protection policy of the request is for a group of entities comprising the first entity and at least another entity at the first level, and wherein the action to reduce data deduplication sprawl comprises moving the first entity out of the group of entities ([0124] if an overlap is detected, a user may be provided with the option of excluding the protectable object of the overlapping data source from the current protected group, or removing the data source containing conflicted protectable object causing the overlap from the existing protected group and adding it to the current protected group).
It would have been obvious for one of ordinary skill in the art before the date the current invention was effectively filed to have modified Lampert and Bandarupalli by Wahlert to detect objects that may be in overlapping data protection policies.
One of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to make this modification in order to determine a relationship between a first namespace and a second namespace (Wahlert [0016]).
Claims 5-7 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Lampert (U.S Pub # 20250245190) in view of Bandarupalli (U.S Pub # 20230148158) and in further view of Wahlert (U.S Pub # 20060053147) and Chopra (U.S Pub # 20200012572).
With regards to claim 5, Lampert does not disclose however Chopra discloses:
wherein the entity in the third level comprises an application program, and the given entity in the further level comprises a virtual compute entity ([0038, 0079] application level and virtual machine level tagging).
It would have been obvious for one of ordinary skill in the art before the date the current invention was effectively filed to have modified Lampert, Bandarupalli and Wahlert by Chopra to organize applications and virtual machine programs.
One of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to make this modification in order to identify a change of a label associated with data of a production host that hosts at least one virtual machine (Chopra [0004]).
With regards to claim 6, Lampert does not disclose however Chopra discloses:
wherein the plurality of levels of entities further comprises a third level including a virtual store that includes one or more storage volumes ([0035] virtual machines may host databases, email servers, or any other type of applications).
It would have been obvious for one of ordinary skill in the art before the date the current invention was effectively filed to have modified Lampert, Bandarupalli and Wahlert by Chopra to organize applications and virtual machine programs.
One of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to make this modification in order to identify a change of a label associated with data of a production host that hosts at least one virtual machine (Chopra [0004]).
With regards to claim 7, Lampert does not disclose however Chopra discloses:
wherein the entities in the further level comprise application programs, file shares, or virtual compute entities ([0038] applications).
It would have been obvious for one of ordinary skill in the art before the date the current invention was effectively filed to have modified Lampert, Bandarupalli and Wahlert by Chopra to organize applications and virtual machine programs.
One of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to make this modification in order to identify a change of a label associated with data of a production host that hosts at least one virtual machine (Chopra [0004]).
Claims 9, 11 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Lampert (U.S Pub # 20250245190) in view of Bandarupalli (U.S Pub # 20230148158) and in further view of Wahlert (U.S Pub # 20060053147) and Kirshenbaum (U.S Pub # 20110131185).
With regards to claim 9, Lampert does not disclose however Kirshenbaum discloses:
wherein determining that the overlap exists comprises determining that the first entity at a lower level in the storage topology is indirectly protected by the second data protection policy at a higher level in the storage topology ([0023]) in a HDAG backup scheme, each backup is represented as a single HDAG with a single root. Files are represented as HDAGs within the overall backup HDAG. Hdags may and will probably overlap as each HDAG is associated with a retention group. [0025] retention policies are implicit and is associated with all retention groups).
It would have been obvious for one of ordinary skill in the art before the date the current invention was effectively filed to have modified Lampert, Bandarupalli, Wahlert by Kirshenbaum to protect files under a single grouping which may overlap with other groupings.
One of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to make this modification in order to perform to keep track of prior versions of files and directories (Kirshenbaum [0004]).
With regards to claim 11, Lampert does not disclose however Kirshenbauml discloses:
wherein the second data protection policy fully protects the first data for the first entity at a different consistency level ([0015] varying retention policies for a HDAG backup).
It would have been obvious for one of ordinary skill in the art before the date the current invention was effectively filed to have modified Lampert, Bandarupalli, Wahlert by Kirshenbaum to protect files under a single grouping which may overlap with other groupings.
One of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to make this modification in order to perform to keep track of prior versions of files and directories (Kirshenbaum [0004]).
Claims 15-17, 19-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Lampert (U.S Pub # 20250245190) in view of Bandarupalli (U.S Pub # 20230148158) and in further view of Wahlert (U.S Pub # 20060053147).
With regards to claim 15, Lampert discloses
a hardware processor; and a non-transitory storage medium storing instructions executable on the hardware processor to:
provide a representation of a storage topology comprising a plurality of levels of entities that store data in a computing environment, the plurality of levels of entities comprising a first level including storage volumes and a second level including entities that request storage of data in the storage volumes ([0029] create a hierarchy of policies. For example, a tag may be assigned to the identified data object while another tag may be assigned to a bucket into which the data object should be stored. This may cause conflict between tags at different levels);
determine, based on the representation of the storage topology, whether an overlap exists between a first data protection policy for a first entity that is a member of the first level, and a second data protection policy in the policy repository for a second entity that is a member of the second level ([0029] policy conflict).
Lampert does not disclose however Bandarupalli discloses:
store, in a policy repository, data protection policies for respective entities in the computing environment ([0176] maintain policies at the service provider, tenant, project, application levels).
It would have been obvious for one of ordinary skill in the art before the date the current invention was effectively filed to have modified Lampert by Bandarupalli to identify overlaps between deduplication operations.
One of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to make this modification in order so a processor can identify, for each of the first and second policy types, one or more policies enabled for enforcement at each of the hierarchical levels and apply a rule that, when plural policies of a common policy type are enabled for enforcement at different hierarchical levels (Bandarupalli [0020]).
Wahlert discloses:
the first data protection policy specifying duplication of first data for the first entity, the determining of whether the overlap exists comprising determining whether ([0090] protection policy including backup):
a data interaction relationship exists between the first entity at the first level and the second entity at the second level ([0123] detecting overlap of data sources contained in two or more protected groups), and
the first entity is indirectly protected by the second data protection policy at the second level of the storage topology ([0124] when it is determined that a protectable object associated with the selected Namespace Element is contained in an existing protect group (i.e., overlap). The protectable object of the overlapping data source).
based on determining that the overlap exists between the first data protection policy and the second data protection policy, initiate an action including making a change associated with the first and second data protection policies or making a change associated with an entity in the computing environment ([0124] if an overlap is detected, a user may be provided with the option of excluding the protectable object of the overlapping data source from the current protected group, or removing the data source containing conflicted protectable object causing the overlap from the existing protected group and adding it to the current protected group).
It would have been obvious for one of ordinary skill in the art before the date the current invention was effectively filed to have modified Lampert and Bandarupalli by Wahlert to detect objects that may be in overlapping data protection policies.
One of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to make this modification in order to determine a relationship between a first namespace and a second namespace (Wahlert [0016]).
With regards to claim 16, Lampert does not disclose however Bandarupalli discloses:
wherein making the change associated with the first and second data protection policies comprises removing the first data protection policy or the second data protection policy ([0176] a lower level policy is superseded by a conflicting or overlapping higher level policy (or policy of a common type) and not vice versa).
It would have been obvious for one of ordinary skill in the art before the date the current invention was effectively filed to have modified Lampert by Bandarupalli to identify overlaps between deduplication operations.
One of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to make this modification in order so a processor can identify, for each of the first and second policy types, one or more policies enabled for enforcement at each of the hierarchical levels and apply a rule that, when plural policies of a common policy type are enabled for enforcement at different hierarchical levels (Bandarupalli [0020]).
With regards to claim 17, Lampert does not disclose however Wahlert discloses:
wherein making the change associated with the entity in the computing environment comprises one or more of: suspending creation of a recovery point for the entity, re-assigning the entity to a different data protection group, or moving the entity ([0124] if an overlap is detected, a user may be provided with the option of excluding the protectable object of the overlapping data source from the current protected group, or removing the data source containing conflicted protectable object causing the overlap from the existing protected group and adding it to the current protected group).
It would have been obvious for one of ordinary skill in the art before the date the current invention was effectively filed to have modified Lampert and Bandarupalli by Wahlert to detect objects that may be in overlapping data protection policies.
One of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to make this modification in order to determine a relationship between a first namespace and a second namespace (Wahlert [0016]).
With regards to claim 19, Lampert discloses a method comprising:
generating, by a system comprising a hardware processor, a representation of a storage topology comprising a plurality of levels of entities that store data in a computing environment, the plurality of levels of entities comprising a first level including storage volumes and a second level including entities that request storage of data in the storage volumes ([0029] create a hierarchy of policies. For example, a tag may be assigned to the identified data object while another tag may be assigned to a bucket into which the data object should be stored. This may cause conflict between tags at different levels);
receiving, by the system, a request to initiate checking for overlapping data protection policies ([0029] policy conflict);
determining, by the system based on the representation of the storage topology, whether an overlap exists between a first data protection policy for a first entity that is a member of a first level of the plurality of levels of entities, and a second data protection policy for a second entity that is a member of a second level the plurality of levels of entities ([0029] Object storage system 101 may have rules in place for handling conflicts between tags at different levels. In one example, the rules may indicate that the more robust of the two ILM policies associated with the conflicting tags should be used. In another example where two data protection policies are in conflict, the rules may indicate that the policy resulting in greater data protection should be used for the data object).
Lampert does not disclose however Bandarupalli discloses:
storing, in a policy repository, data protection policies ([0176] maintain policies at the service provider, tenant, project, application levels);
initiating, by the system, data protection runs based on the data protection policies that create recovery points for respective entities ([0124] backup policies).
It would have been obvious for one of ordinary skill in the art before the date the current invention was effectively filed to have modified Lampert by Bandarupalli to identify overlaps between deduplication operations.
One of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to make this modification in order so a processor can identify, for each of the first and second policy types, one or more policies enabled for enforcement at each of the hierarchical levels and apply a rule that, when plural policies of a common policy type are enabled for enforcement at different hierarchical levels (Bandarupalli [0020]).
Wahlert discloses:
the first data protection policy specifying duplication of first data for the first entity, the determining of whether the overlap exists comprising determining whether ([0090] protection policy including backup):
a data interaction relationship exists between the first entity at the first level and the second entity at the second level ([0123] detecting overlap of data sources contained in two or more protected groups), and
the first entity is indirectly protected by the second data protection policy at the second level of the storage topology ([0124] when it is determined that a protectable object associated with the selected Namespace Element is contained in an existing protect group (i.e., overlap). The protectable object of the overlapping data source).
based on determining that the overlap exists between the first data protection policy and the second data protection policy, initiate an action including making a change associated with the first and second data protection policies or making a change associated with an entity in the computing environment ([0124] if an overlap is detected, a user may be provided with the option of excluding the protectable object of the overlapping data source from the current protected group, or removing the data source containing conflicted protectable object causing the overlap from the existing protected group and adding it to the current protected group).
It would have been obvious for one of ordinary skill in the art before the date the current invention was effectively filed to have modified Lampert and Bandarupalli by Wahlert to detect objects that may be in overlapping data protection policies.
One of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to make this modification in order to determine a relationship between a first namespace and a second namespace (Wahlert [0016]).
With regards to claim 20, Lampert further discloses:
wherein the request comprises one of: a request to add the first data protection policy for the first entity, or a request based on an event in the computing environment ([0048] determine policy conflict based on identifying tags).
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to TONY WU whose telephone number is (571)272-2033. The examiner can normally be reached Monday-Friday (9-5).
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/TONY WU/ Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2166
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