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 § 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) 1-20 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) as being anticipated by Cain(US 2021/0240369).
Regarding claims 1, 12 and 20 Cain discloses a method comprising: determining, by a storage orchestrator, for a storage object, a storage configuration that can achieve objectives included in a request to provision storage resources, based on one or more interaction between policies assigned to the storage object that are generated based on the objectives(Paragraph 73: may request a persistent volume from the container orchestrator 222. The request may also include provisioning requirements, such as an indication that the virtual PV storage class 227 is the desired storage class for the requested persistent volume. Other requirements passed with the request may include a desired capacity, for example, the requirements being the claimed declared objectives; Paragraph 100: different virtual PV storage classes may represent gold, silver, and bronze tier offerings of virtual PVs that a storage virtualization system may offer. In other examples, other virtual PV storage classes may be offered for one or more different policy goals, such as performance goals, tiered storage, mixed public cloud and private/local storage goals, RPO and/or RTO goals, redundancy goals, backup goals, or other goals, Paragraph 113; determine a mapping of the parameters of the virtual persistent volume storage class to parameters of storage classes available in the container environment, such that the mapped parameters of the storage classes fulfills the parameters of the virtual PV storage class. In some instances, one storage class sufficiently fulfills the parameters of the virtual PV storage class. In other instances, multiple storage classes are determined to map to various parameters of the virtual PV storage class); and
provisioning, by the storage orchestrator in accordance with the storage configuration, storage that implements the storage object from a pool of storage resources(Paragraph 114; provision at least one volume from storage types represented by the storage classes in accordance with the mapping. The provisioned volume or volumes constitute the virtual persistent volume).
Regarding claim 2, Cain discloses the method of claim 1, wherein the two or more storage systems are on-premises storage systems(Paragraph 33, In various instances, multiple local block mount points 170, multiple local file system mount points 172, multiple remote volume mount points 174, multiple virtualized storage mount points 176, and/or multiple public cloud persistent volume mount points 178 may be requested and acquired by the control plane 140).
Regarding claim 3, Cain discloses the method of claim 1, wherein the two or more storage systems include an on-premises storage system and at least one of a cloud-based storage system and a virtual storage system(Paragraph 33, In various instances, multiple local block mount points 170, multiple local file system mount points 172, multiple remote volume mount points 174, multiple virtualized storage mount points 176, and/or multiple public cloud persistent volume mount points 178 may be requested and acquired by the control plane 140).
Regarding claim 4, Cain discloses the method of claim 1, where in the two or more storage systems include at least a first storage system and a second storage system; wherein a storage implementation of the first storage system is one of block storage, file system storage, object storage, and database storage; wherein a storage implementation of the second storage system is one of block storage, file system storage, object storage, and database storage; and wherein the storage implementation of the first storage system is different than the storage implementation of the second storage system(Paragraph 33, In various instances, multiple local block mount points 170, multiple local file system mount points 172, multiple remote volume mount points 174, multiple virtualized storage mount points 176, and/or multiple public cloud persistent volume mount points 178 may be requested and acquired by the control plane 140).
Regarding claim 5, Cain discloses the method of claim 1, wherein the storage orchestrator is a cloud-based storage orchestration service(Paragraph 17: The computing system 100 may be in communication with other computing systems, such as computing system 110, via a wired and/or wireless network for example. The other computing systems may be similar to the computing system 100, and may each include at least a processing resource and a machine readable medium. The computing systems 100 and 110 may each execute software (i.e., processing resource 102 executes certain instructions 105) to deploy nodes of a container orchestrator 122)
Regarding claim 6, Cain discloses the method of claim 1, wherein the one or more policies generated based on the declared objectives include one or more of a data protection policy, a placement policy, a permissions policy, a quotas policy, a provisioning policy, a recovery policy, and a performance policy(Paragraph 11: Different storage policies may be aligned with different storage goals such as, for example, different levels of service (e.g., gold, silver, bronze tier service), capacity, cost, performance (e.g., archival or real-time storage), latency, data protection, redundancy (e.g., number of failures to tolerate), backup policy (e.g., number of backups, backup schedule, etc.), recovery time objective (RTO), recovery point objective (RPO), or other measures).
Regarding claim 7, Cain discloses the method of claim 1 further comprising: defining, in response to a request to provision storage resources, the storage object(Paragraph 73: via user input, may request a persistent volume from the container orchestrator 222. The request may also include provisioning requirements, such as an indication that the virtual PV storage class 227 is the desired storage class for the requested persistent volume. Other requirements passed with the request may include a desired capacity, for example, the requirements being the claimed declared objectives).
Regarding claim 8, Cain discloses the method of claim 1, wherein defining, in response to a request to provision storage resources, the storage object includes assigning, in response to user input, the one or more policies to the storage object generated based on the declared objectives (Paragraph 73: via user input, may request a persistent volume from the container orchestrator 222. The request may also include provisioning requirements, such as an indication that the virtual PV storage class 227 is the desired storage class for the requested persistent volume. Other requirements passed with the request may include a desired capacity, for example).
Regarding claim 9, Cain discloses the method of claim 1 further comprising: updating, in response to a policy modification, the storage configuration for the storage object in dependence upon policy modification; and deploying the updated storage configuration(Paragraph 59: Data services provider 134 (in conjunction with the volume manager 138 in some implementations) may move data objects from one extent to a different extent, and update the extent table accordingly. Example triggering conditions may include an increased security status of data which may cause the data services provider 134 to move that data from public cloud storage 164 to non-cloud storage 106, 108, 160, or 162; aging of data which may cause the data services provider 134 to move that data to an archival class of storage (e.g., remote storage 160); recent frequent access of data which may cause the data services provider 134 to move that data to high performance storage (e.g., local physical storage 106); or other types of conditions).
Regarding claim 10, Cain discloses the method of claim 1 further comprising: updating, in response to a migration event, the storage configuration for the storage object in dependence upon at least the declared objectives; and provisioning, in accordance with the updated storage configuration, storage that implements the storage object(Paragraph 57: The data services provider 134 may also perform a migration operation. The migration may move data objects between different ones of the underlying storage within a virtual PV 156, including between different local storage, between local and remote storage, between different remote storage, between different public cloud storage, between public cloud storage and non-public cloud storage (either local or remote), or between other combinations of underlying storage).
Regarding claim 11, Cain discloses the method of claim 1 further comprising: updating, in response to a data services upgrade, the storage configuration for the storage object in dependence upon at least the declared objectives; and deploying the updated storage configuration(Paragraph 59: Data services provider 134 (in conjunction with the volume manager 138 in some implementations) may move data objects from one extent to a different extent, and update the extent table accordingly. Example triggering conditions may include an increased security status of data which may cause the data services provider 134 to move that data from public cloud storage 164 to non-cloud storage 106, 108, 160, or 162; aging of data which may cause the data services provider 134 to move that data to an archival class of storage (e.g., remote storage 160); recent frequent access of data which may cause the data services provider 134 to move that data to high performance storage (e.g., local physical storage 106); or other types of conditions).
Regarding claim 13, Cain discloses the apparatus of claim 12, wherein the two or more storage systems are on-premises storage systems(Paragraph 33, In various instances, multiple local block mount points 170, multiple local file system mount points 172, multiple remote volume mount points 174, multiple virtualized storage mount points 176, and/or multiple public cloud persistent volume mount points 178 may be requested and acquired by the control plane 140).
Regarding claim 14, Cain discloses the apparatus of claim 12, wherein the two or more storage systems include an on- premises storage system and at least one of a cloud-based storage system and a virtual storage system(Paragraph 33, In various instances, multiple local block mount points 170, multiple local file system mount points 172, multiple remote volume mount points 174, multiple virtualized storage mount points 176, and/or multiple public cloud persistent volume mount points 178 may be requested and acquired by the control plane 140).
Regarding claim 15, Cain discloses the apparatus of claim 12, wherein the one or more policies include one or more of a data protection policy, a placement policy, a permissions policy, a quotas policy, a provisioning policy, a recovery policy, and a performance policy(Paragraph 11: Different storage policies may be aligned with different storage goals such as, for example, different levels of service (e.g., gold, silver, bronze tier service), capacity, cost, performance (e.g., archival or real-time storage), latency, data protection, redundancy (e.g., number of failures to tolerate), backup policy (e.g., number of backups, backup schedule, etc.), recovery time objective (RTO), recovery point objective (RPO), or other measures).
Regarding claim 16, Cain discloses the apparatus of claim 12, wherein generating, in dependence upon one or more policies associated with a storage object, a codified state for the storage object includes: identifying a placement group policy associated with the storage object; wherein determining, in dependence upon at least the codified state, a storage configuration for the storage object includes: identifying a placement for the storage object; and wherein provisioning, in accordance with the storage configuration, storage that implements the storage object includes: provisioning a volume that implements the storage object in accordance with the placement(Paragraph 70: The policy engine 242 may utilize a common schema 260 to translate each storage class 226 into a corresponding storage profile. For example, storage A storage class 226-1 may be translated into storage A profile 262-1, and storage B storage class 226-2 may be translated into storage B profile 262-2.
Regarding claim 17, Cain discloses the apparatus of claim 16 further comprising: updating, in response to a placement group modification, the storage configuration for the storage object; and deploying the updated storage configuration(Paragraph 59: Data services provider 134 (in conjunction with the volume manager 138 in some implementations) may move data objects from one extent to a different extent, and update the extent table accordingly. Example triggering conditions may include an increased security status of data which may cause the data services provider 134 to move that data from public cloud storage 164 to non-cloud storage 106, 108, 160, or 162; aging of data which may cause the data services provider 134 to move that data to an archival class of storage (e.g., remote storage 160); recent frequent access of data which may cause the data services provider 134 to move that data to high performance storage (e.g., local physical storage 106); or other types of conditions).
Regarding claim 18, Cain discloses the apparatus of claim 16, wherein generating, in dependence upon one or more policies associated with a storage object, a codified state for the storage object includes: identifying a data recovery policy associated with the storage object; and wherein determining, in dependence upon at least the codified state, a storage configuration for the storage object includes: identifying a storage configuration that supports the data recovery policy(Paragraph 60: Data services provider 134 may also support redundancy based data protection. For example, the data services provider 134 may provide RAID data protection. For example, the data services provider 134 (in conjunction with the volume manager 138 in some implementations) may create a RAID set across underlying storage allocations or within an underlying storage allocation (e.g., in cases where local physical storage 106 includes a set of drives. Thus, if data on the primary virtual PV is unrecoverable, the data may be restored from the virtual PV replica using a failover procedure).
Regarding claim 19, Cain discloses the apparatus of claim 18 further comprising computer program instructions that, when executed by the computer processor, cause the apparatus to carry out the step of. coordinating consistent snapshots for a placement group, wherein the placement group includes two or more volumes hosted across a set of storage systems associated with the placement group(Paragraph 56: The snapshot-based backup may be performed on a scheduled basis for example, without disrupting the containerized application 124. Moreover, the snapshot-based back up may be performed primarily at the software virtualization layer 150, thus avoiding complexities of managing each individual underlying storage directly. Similar to the backup process, a restoration process may also proceed with a comparison of the metadata or data objects to be restored and the objects already existing on the restoration target, and a transmission of only that data that does not exist on the restoration target).
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 conflicting claims 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); 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 nonstatutory double patenting provided the reference application or patent either is shown to be commonly owned with the examined application, or claims an invention made as a result of activities undertaken within the scope of a joint research agreement. See MPEP § 717.02 for applications subject to examination under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA as explained in MPEP § 2159. See MPEP § 2146 et seq. for applications not subject to examination under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA . A terminal disclaimer must be signed in compliance with 37 CFR 1.321(b).
The USPTO Internet website contains terminal disclaimer forms which may be used. Please visit www.uspto.gov/patent/patents-forms. The filing date of the application in which the form is filed determines what form (e.g., PTO/SB/25, PTO/SB/26, PTO/AIA /25, or PTO/AIA /26) should be used. A web-based eTerminal Disclaimer may be filled out completely online using web-screens. An eTerminal Disclaimer that meets all requirements is auto-processed and approved immediately upon submission. For more information about eTerminal Disclaimers, refer to www.uspto.gov/patents/process/file/efs/guidance/eTD-info-I.jsp.
Claims 1-20 are rejected on the ground of nonstatutory double patenting as being unpatentable over claims 1-19 of U.S. Patent No. 12,254,199. Although the claims at issue are not identical, they are not patentably distinct from each other because the instant claims 1-20 fall entirely within the scope of claims 1-19 of U.S. Patent No. 12,254,199. The elements in claims 1-20 of the current application and the corresponding elements in claims 1-19 of U.S. Patent No. 12,254,199 are substantially the same and therefore the instant claims 1-20 are obvious over claims 1-19 of U.S. Patent No. 12,254,199.
For example, claim 1 of U.S. Patent No. 12,254,199 teach claim 1 of the present application.
Conclusion
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/NIMESH G PATEL/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2187
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