Non-Final Office 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 Objections
Claim 1 is objected to because of the following informalities: In line 1: “A system for communicating an a network” should be “A system for communicating on a network”. Appropriate correction is required.
Claim 19 is objected to because of the following informalities: Claim 19 recites “The method of claim 18, wherein the target capability parameters comprise distance information comprising an indication of a distance between a geographic location and the target host, and wherein the instructions, when executed by the one or more processors, further cause the system to identify the target host from among a plurality of hosts based on the distance information…” (emphasis by Examiner). Claim 19 depends from a method claim and not a system claim. There is no previous recitation of “instructions executed by the one or more processors” or “a system” in claims 11 and 18. It appears to be a copy of claim 10 and should recite steps of a method. Appropriate correction is required.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 102
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.
Claim(s) 1, 4-6, 8-11, 14-16, and 18-20 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) as being anticipated by French et al., US 9,207,976 B2.
Referring to claim 1:
In col. 3, lines 41-58, French et al. disclose a system for communicating on a network, the system comprising: one or more processors; one or more computer memories coupled to the one or more processors, the one or more computer memories comprising instructions executed by the one or more processors.
In col. 6, lines 25-31, French et al. disclose instructions, which when executed by the one or more processors cause the system to: obtain first capability parameters associated with a software object (VM-virtual machine) executing on a first host, wherein the first capability parameters comprise an indication of resources (hardware resource requirements) required to execute the software object (VM).
In col. 6, lines 60-64, French et al. disclose instructions, which when executed by the one or more processors cause the system to: obtain second capability parameters associated with the software object (VM), the second capability parameters being different from the first capability parameters (changes in the VM workload, VM requirements)
In col. 7, lines 41-44, French et al. disclose instructions, which when executed by the one or more processors cause the system to: determine, based at least in part on the second capability parameters, that resources of the first host are insufficient to continue executing the software object.
In col. 7, lines 4-21, French et al. disclose instructions, which when executed by the one or more processors cause the system to: identify a target host based at least in part on the second capability parameters, wherein the target host has sufficient resources to execute the software object; and migrate the software object from the first host to the target host over the network.
Referring to claims 4 and 14, in col. 9, lines 31-32, French et al. disclose wherein the instructions, when executed by the one or more processors, further cause the system to send a resource request message on the network when it is determined that the first host has insufficient resources (a candidate VM is introduced back into the candidate VM pool and placed in the queue). Further, in col. 3, lines 53-57, French et al. disclose that the VM monitoring module may reside on the hardware resource. The performance resource threshold being exceeded notification would be sent to another device over the network (see Figures 1 and 2).
Referring to claims 5 and 15, in col. 7, lines 52-59, French et al. disclose wherein the resources of the first host are determined to be insufficient when below a threshold associated with the second capability parameters (the threshold is a preferred limit and migration occurs so utilization does not go over the limit).
Referring to claims 6 and 16, in col. 7, lines 30-32, French et al. disclose wherein the second capability parameters comprise at least one of a memory storage capability and/or a processing capability.
Referring to claim 8, in col. 6, lines 31-37, French et al. disclose wherein the instructions, when executed by the one or more processors, further cause the system to receive target capability parameters from the target host over the network, wherein the target capability parameters comprise an indication of available resources of the target host (slots available).
Referring to claim 9, in col. 6, lines 25-37, French et al. disclose wherein the instructions, when executed by the one or more processors, further cause the system to identify the target host from among a plurality of hosts, based at least in part on the second capability parameters (hardware resource utilization) and the received target capability parameters (slots available).
Referring to claims 10 and 19, in col. 8, lines 47-56 and col. 12, lines 15-18, French et al. disclose wherein the target capability parameters comprise distance information (user location vector—col. 10, lines 18-20) comprising an indication of a distance between a geographic location and the target host, and wherein the instructions, when executed by the one or more processors, further cause the system to identify the target host from among a plurality of hosts based on the distance information.
Referring to claim 11:
In col. 3, lines 41-58, French et al. disclose a method for communicating on a network.
In col. 6, lines 25-31, French et al. disclose obtaining first capability parameters associated with a software object (VM-virtual machine) executing on a first host, wherein the first capability parameters comprise an indication of resources (hardware resource requirements) required to execute the software object (VM).
In col. 6, lines 60-64, French et al. disclose obtaining second capability parameters associated with the software object (VM), the second capability parameters being different from the first capability parameters (changes in the VM workload, VM requirements)
In col. 7, lines 41-44, French et al. disclose determining, based at least in part on the second capability parameters, that resources of the first host are insufficient to continue executing the software object.
In col. 7, lines 4-21, French et al. disclose identifying a target host based at least in part on the second capability parameters, wherein the target host has sufficient resources to execute the software object; and migrating the software object from the first host to the target host over the network.
Referring to claim 18:
In col. 6, lines 31-37, French et al. disclose receiving target capability parameters from the target host over the network, wherein the target capability parameters comprise an indication of available resources of the target host (slots available).
In col. 6, lines 25-37, French et al. disclose identifying the target host from among a plurality of hosts, based at least in part on the second capability parameters (hardware resource utilization) and the received target capability parameters (slots available).
Referring to claim 20:
In col. 6, lines 25-31, French et al. disclose a network comprising a first host, the method comprising obtaining capability parameters associated with a software object (VM-virtual machine) executing on the first host, wherein the capability parameters comprise an indication of resources (hardware resource requirements) required to execute the software object (VM).
In col. 3, lines 48-50, French et al. disclose obtaining a geographic location associated with the software object (location of hardware resources hosting a virtual machine).
In col. 12, lines 65-67 continued in col. 13, lines 1-10, French et al. disclose determining whether a target host is closer to the geographic location than the first host, wherein the target host has sufficient resources to execute the software object; and migrating the software object from the first host to the target host when the target host is determined to be closer to the geographic location than the first host.
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.
Claim(s) 7 and 17 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over French et al., US 9,207,976 B2 as applied to claims 1 and 11 above, and further in view of Sugabrahman et al., US 2016/0062853 A1.
Referring to claims 7 and 17, in col. 9, lines 13-16, French et al. disclose migrating the candidate VM to a hardware resource. However, French et al. do not explicitly disclose maintaining an instance of the software object at the first host until migration is complete. In para. 0073, Sugabrahman et al. creating files and directories at a destination datastore. In para. 0074, Sugabrahman et al. disclose marking the newly created instance of the VM at the destination datastore. In para. 0075, Sugabrahman et al. disclose responsive to completing copying of VM data from the source datastore to the destination datastore, storage migration engine marks the instance of VM data in destination datastore with an indication that the given VM data has been migrated successfully. For example, storage migration engine changes the value (e.g., to a logical true) of migration completed field within VM configuration file to indicate that that instance of VM data at datastore has now been successfully and completely migrated. In some embodiments, storage migration engine marks the source instance as migration completed as well, i.e., changes the value of a migration completed field (not shown) of the instance of VM data at the source datastore. In para. 0076, Sugabrahman et al. disclose the old instance of VM data is deleted. It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill at the time of filing of the invention to include the marking of VM instances of Sugabrahman et al. into the migration process of French et al. A person of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to make the modification because marking the migration completed ensures that the destination VM is complete and the migration was successful. The destination VM is then available for use and the source VM can be deleted.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 2, 3, 12, and 13 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.
The following is a statement of reasons for the indication of allowable subject matter.
With respect to claims 2 and 12, US 9,378,044 B1 discloses when, in the time period tn+4-tn+5, the first VM requests an increase in instruction-processing bandwidth from 6 GHz to 10 GHz, the hypervisor constructs, according to the currently disclosed approach, a set of VM resource-allocation-state vectors reflective of the states of the VMs following satisfaction of the request, inputs them to the machine-learned model, and receives the computational-resource utilizations for each of the executing VMs. From these predicted computer-resource utilizations, the hypervisor can determine whether or not the ratio of the demand for one or more computational resources to the utilizations of the one or more computational resources for any of the VMs exceeds a threshold value (see col. 17, lines 38-50). However, the prior art does not teach or reasonably suggest using an artificial intelligence procedure, that the first capability parameters of the software object have changed to the second capability parameters.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
US 9,632,839 B2 discloses using physical machine metrics to determine when to migrate a virtual machine (VM) and choosing the VM to migrate based on the VM metrics.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to MICHAEL C MASKULINSKI whose telephone number is (571)272-3649. The examiner can normally be reached Monday-Friday 8:00 am-5:00 pm.
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If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Bryce Bonzo can be reached at (571) 272-3655. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/MICHAEL MASKULINSKI/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2113
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