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.
Claims 1-4, 9-15, 20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Wang et al. (US 2022/0066882 A1), hereinafter “Wang”, and in view of Agarwal et al. (US 2023/0010143 A1), hereinafter “Agarwal”.
As per claim 1, Wang teaches a snapshot storage method comprising:
“in response to a full dump request for a target snapshot stored in a first-type storage resource, fully storing the target snapshot into a second-type storage resource” at [0063]-[0069] and Fig. 4A;
(Wang teaches tiering manager 504 identifies old snapshots of data set X that have been uploaded to and reside in standard storage tier 132 (i.e., “first-type storage resource”) and writes the identified old snapshots to cold storage tier 134 (i.e., “second-type storage resource”))
“if it is determined, based on snapshot description information corresponding to the target snapshot, that the target snapshot comprise a target data unit of which a storage location is marked as the first-type storage resource, deleting the target data unit from the first-type storge resource” at [0057], [0068] and Fig. 6;
(Wang teach tiering manager 504 updates metadata maps/tables 124-128 (i.e., “snapshot description information”) to indicate that the data blocks (i.e., “target data unit”) are now dead in their existing log segments in standard storage tier 132, thereby effectively moving (i.e., tiering) those data blocks from the standard storage tier to the cold storage tier. The metadata updates performed at step 610 will cause garbage collector 120 to eventually delete the tiered data blocks from standard storage tier 132)
“wherein a storage cost of the second-type storage resource is lower than that of the first type storage resource” at [0002].
(Wang teaches the main benefit of the cold storage tier over the standard storage tier is lower storage cost)
Wang does not explicitly teach “marking, in snapshot description information corresponding to a further snapshot comprising the target data unit and the snapshot description information corresponding to the target snapshot, a storage location corresponding to the target data unit as the second-type storage resource” as claimed. However, Agarwal teaches a similar method for archiving snapshots from a hot storage tier to an archival storage tier, including the steps of: “marking, in snapshot description information corresponding to a further snapshot comprising the target data unit and the snapshot description information corresponding to the target snapshot, a storage location corresponding to the target data unit as the second-type storage resource” at [0025]-[0030], [0068].
(Agarwal teaches a backup snapshot of the file system data may be backed up to a storage system. The storage system stores the file system data and organize the file system data using an index. Each time a backup snapshot is performed, the storage system generates or update the index to indicate the one or more files that were included in the backup snapshot and storage locations for the file. Agarwal teaches after changing storage class for the data associated with a file, updating metadata associated with the file to indicate storage class for the file has changed from hot storage tier 123 to archival storage tier)
Thus, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to combine Agarwal with Wang’s teaching in order to “enable a user associated with a primary system to take advantage of the performance benefit of restoring one or more archived files from a hot storage tier of the cloud storage to the primary system without incurring additional network, computing, and/or monetary costs by exceeding storage threshold associated with the hot storage tier of the cloud storage”, as suggested by Agarwal at [0024].
As per claim 2, Wang and Agarwal teach the method of claim 1 discussed above. Wang also teaches: wherein “the fully storing the target snapshot into the second-type storage resource comprises: copying the target data unit into target storage space provided by the second-type storage resource for the target snapshot; and if it is determined, based on the snapshot description information corresponding to the target snapshot, that the target snapshot comprises a dumped data unit of which a storage location is marked as a second-type storage resource, copy the dumped data unit in the second-type storage resource into the target storage space” at [0063]-[0073].
As per claim 3, Wang and Agarwal teach the method of claim 1 discussed above. Wang also teaches: wherein “a snapshot is stored in the first-type storage resource in an incremental manner, and the deleting the target data unit form the first-type storage resource comprise: if the target data unit is referenced by the target snapshot from a parent snapshot of the target snapshot, deleting the target data unit from storage space provided by the first-type storage resource for the parent snapshot; if the target data unit is an increment occurring in the target snapshot, deleting the target data unit from storage space provided by the first-type storage resource for the target snapshot; and releasing the storage space provided by the first-type storage resource for the target snapshot” at [0016]-[0023], [0057], [0068].
As per claim 4, Wang and Agarwal teach the method according to claim 1 discussed above. Wang also teaches: “wherein a snapshot is stored in the first-type storage resource in an incremental manner, and the method further comprises: in response to a recovery request for the target snapshot stored in the second-type storage resource, storing respective data units comprised in the target snapshot into the first-type storage resource; deleting the target snapshot from the second-type storage resource; and marking, in snapshot description information corresponding to respective snapshots comprising a specified data unit, a storage location corresponding to the specified data unit as the first-type storage resource, wherein the specified data unit is any one of the respective data units comprised in the target snapshot” at [0016]-[0023], [0057], [0068].
As per claim 9, Wang and Agarwal teach the method according to claim 1 discussed above. Wang also teaches: “wherein the first-type storage resource adopts a standard storage tier resource provided by an object storage cluster, and the second-type storage resource adopts an archive storage tier resource provided by an object storage cluster” at [0002].
Claims 10-15, 20 recite similar limitations as in claims 1-4, 9 and are therefore rejected by the same reasons.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 5-8, 16-19 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.
Conclusion
Examiner's Note: Examiner has cited particular columns and line numbers in the references applied to the claims above for the convenience of the applicant. Although the specified citations are representative of the teachings of the art and are applied to specific limitations within the individual claim, other passages and figures may apply as well. It is respectfully requested from the applicant in preparing responses, to fully consider the references in entirety as potentially teaching all or part of the claimed invention, as well as the context of the passage as taught by the prior art or disclosed by the Examiner.
In the case of amending the Claimed invention, Applicant is respectfully requested to indicate the portion(s) of the specification which dictate(s) the structure relied on for proper interpretation and also to verify and ascertain the metes and bounds of the claimed invention.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to KHANH B PHAM whose telephone number is (571)272-4116. The examiner can normally be reached Monday - Friday, 8am to 4pm.
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/KHANH B PHAM/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2166
June 30, 2026
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