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 Objections
Claim 17 is objected to because of the following informalities: claim 17 is currently dependent upon claim 15 which is improper.
A series of singular dependent claims is permissible in which a dependent claim refers to a preceding claim which, in turn, refers to another preceding claim.
A claim which depends from a dependent claim should not be separated by any claim which does not also depend from said dependent claim. It should be kept in mind that a dependent claim may refer to any preceding independent claim. For claim 17 to be proper it should be dependent upon either claims 1, 9, or 16.
In general, applicant's sequence will not be changed. See MPEP § 608.01(n).
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, 2, 8, 9, 18, and 19 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Small et al. (US PGPub 2013/0318283, hereafter referred to as Small) in view of Weissman et al. (US PGPub 2019/0324865, hereafter referred to as Weissman) in view of Subramanian et al. (US PGPub 2021/0326216, hereafter referred to as Subramanian).
Regarding claim 1, Small teaches a method comprising: sampling a measure of saturation throughput and a measure of saturation latency of a cache of a storage system (Paragraphs [0054], [0057], and [0061], discuss methods of bypassing a cache based on the throughput as well as latency meaning they would have to be tracked/sampled), and based at least in part on the measure of saturation throughput and the measure of saturation latency, selectively (i) performing, by the storage system, a lookup into the cache to service the read request or (ii) bypassing, by the storage system, the lookup into the cache by directing the read request to a persistent storage subsystem of the storage system to service the read request (Paragraphs [0054], [0057], and [0061], as stated previously based on the throughput and latency a decision can be made to service the request from the cache or bypass the cache and service the request from storage). Small does not teach a virtual storage system and an external cache (EC), and receiving, by the virtual storage system, a read request to retrieve an amount of data greater than or equal to a large read threshold.
Weissman teaches receiving, by the storage system, a read request to retrieve an amount of data greater than or equal to a large read threshold (Paragraph [0097], states that if large bulk reads are received they can be serviced directly from the data node as opposed to the cache. While not explicitly stated that there is a threshold as there is a distinction being made between the reads it means that a threshold must exist in order to properly classify the reads). It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify the teachings of Small to also look at the size of a read request when determining whether or not to use a cache as taught in Weissman so to determine efficient replication at a level of granularity that reduces unnecessary replication of static data and prevents undue performance bottlenecks (Weissman, Paragraph [0006]). Small and Weissman do not teach a virtual storage system and an external cache.
Subramanian teaches a virtual storage system and an external cache (Paragraph [0023] and [0098], states that the storage system can be a virtual one that can be executed within a hyperscaler and that an external cache can exist). Since both Small/Weissman and Subramanian teach the use of storage systems it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to substitute the storage system of Small and Weissman with that of Subramanian to obtain the predictable result of a virtual storage system and an external cache (as all this does is specify the type of storage system and cache).
Regarding claim 2, Small, Weissman, and Subramanian teach all the limitations of claim 1. Subramanian further teaches wherein an available throughput of the backing storage device is controlled by a hyperscaler (Paragraph [0023], as stated in the rejection to claim 1). Weissman further teaches wherein the method further comprises reserving, by the virtual storage system, some portion of the available throughput for use by small read requests, relating to retrieval of respective amounts of data less than the predetermined or configurable large read threshold, by limiting utilization of the available throughput by large read requests, relating to retrieval of respective amounts of data greater than or equal to the predetermined or configurable large read threshold, to a portion of the available throughput (Paragraph [0097], the large reads are the only ones that that trigger the bypassing of the cache meaning that the smaller reads would be directed to the cache and the available throughput would be assigned to service the smaller reads to the cache). The combination of and reason for combining are the same as those given in claim 1.
Regarding claims 8 and 9, claims 8 and 9 are the computer readable medium claims associated with claims 1 and 2. Since Small, Weissman, and Subramanian teach all the limitations to claims 1 and 2, they also teach all the limitations to claims 8 and 9; therefore the rejections to claims 1 and 2 also apply to claims 8 and 9.
Regarding claims 18 and 19, claims 18 and 19 are the system claims associated with claims 1 and 2. Since Small, Weissman, and Subramanian teach all the limitations to claims 1 and 2, they also teach all the limitations to claims 18 and 19; therefore the rejections to claims 1 and 2 also apply to claims 18 and 19.
Claims 3, 10, and 20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Small, Weissman, and Subramanian as applied to claims 2 above, and further in view of Mittal, A Survey of Cache Bypassing Techniques, Journal of Low Power Electronics and Applications, April 2016 (hereafter referred to as Mittal).
Regarding claim 3, Small, Weissman, and Subramanian teach all the limitations to claim 2. Small, Weissman, and Subramanian do not teach wherein the method further comprises: based on the monitoring, determining, by the virtual storage system, a current read performance profile of the backing storage device, based on the current read performance profile, determining, by the virtual storage system, a saturation point of the backing storage device, and based on the measure of saturation, driving, by the virtual storage system, utilization of the backing storage toward the saturation point.
Mittal teaches wherein the method further comprises: based on the monitoring, determining, by the virtual storage system, a current read performance profile of the backing storage device (Page 23, Section 7.2: monitor L1 contention and NoC congestion to control the number of active warps by static profiling, adjust the active-warp count based on bypassing rate), based on the current read performance profile, determining, by the virtual storage system, a saturation point of the backing storage device (Page 9, 23, Section 7.2: record the bypass history of every block in their generations using 2-bit saturation counter), and based on the measure of saturation, driving, by the virtual storage system, utilization of the backing storage toward the saturation point (Page 22, Section 7.2: record the bypass history of every block in their generations using 2-bit saturation counter). Since both Small/Weissman/Subramanian and Mittal teach cache bypass methods it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to combine the prior art elements according to known methods by modifying the teachings of Small, Weissman, and Subramanian to also utilize a read profile and also drive the storage system to saturation points as taught in Mittal to obtain the predictable result of wherein the method further comprises: based on the monitoring, determining, by the virtual storage system, a current read performance profile of the backing storage device, based on the current read performance profile, determining, by the virtual storage system, a saturation point of the backing storage device, and based on the measure of saturation, driving, by the virtual storage system, utilization of the backing storage toward the saturation point.
Regarding claim 10, claim 10 is the computer readable medium claim associated with claim 3. Since Small, Weissman, Subramanian, and Mittal teach all the limitations to claim 3 and Mittal further teaches based on the measure of saturation, drive utilization of the EC toward the saturation point by throttling concurrent reads to the EC (pg. 23, discusses throttling techniques that can be used), they also teach all the limitations to claim 10; therefore the rejection to claim 3 also applies to claim 10.
Regarding claim 20, claim 20 is the system claim associated with claim 3. Since Small, Weissman, Subramanian, and Mittal teach all the limitations to claim 3, they also teach all the limitations to claim 20; therefore the rejection to claim 3 also applies to claim 20.
Claims 4, 11, and 21 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Small, Weissman, Subramanian, and Mittal as applied to claim 3 above, and further in view of Sankaran et al. (US PGPub 2020/0004703, hereafter referred to as Sankaran).
Regarding claim 4, Small, Weissman, Subramanian, and Mittal teach all the limitations of claim 3. Small, Weissman, Subramanian, and Mittal do not teach wherein said driving, by the virtual storage system, utilization of the backing storage toward the saturation point comprises updating a depth of a general EC lookup request queue maintained by the virtual storage system onto which all in-flight read requests, regardless of size, for which respective lookups into the EC are to be performed are placed.
Sankaran teaches wherein said driving, by the virtual storage system, utilization of the backing storage toward the saturation point comprises updating a depth of a general EC lookup request queue maintained by the virtual storage system onto which all in-flight read requests, regardless of size, for which respective lookups into the EC are to be performed are placed (Paragraph [0155], states the queue depth can be updated to achieve the maximum throughput and that all outstanding (in-flight) commands can be placed in it). It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify the teachings of Small, Weissman, Subramanian, and Mittal to utilize a command queue as taught in Sankaran so to achieve full throughput potential (Sankaran, Paragraph [0155]).
Regarding claim 11, claim 11 is the computer readable medium claim associated with claim 4. Since Small, Weissman, Subramanian, Mittal, and Sankaran teach all the limitations to claim 4, they also teach all the limitations to claim 11; therefore the rejection to claim 4 also applies to claim 11.
Regarding claim 21, claim 21 is the system claim associated with claim 4. Since Small, Weissman, Subramanian, Mittal, and Sankaran teach all the limitations to claim 4, they also teach all the limitations to claim 21; therefore the rejection to claim 4 also applies to claim 21.
Claims 5, 12, and 22 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Small, Weissman, Subramanian, Mittal, and Sankaran as applied to claim 4 above, and further in view of Halaharivi et al. (US PGPub 2016/0291884, hereafter referred to as Halaharivi).
Regarding claim 5, Small, Weissman, Subramanian, Mittal, and Sankaran teach all the limitations of claim 4. Small, Weissman, Subramanian, Mittal, and Sankaran do not teach wherein said limiting utilization of the available throughput by large read requests comprises maintaining, by the virtual storage system, a large EC lookup request queue on which those of the large read requests for which respective lookups into the EC are to be performed are placed.
Halaharivi teaches maintaining, a large EC lookup request queue on which those of the large read requests for which respective lookups into the EC are to be performed are placed (Paragraph [0036], states that there can be two read queues, one for small read requests and one for large read requests). Since Small/Weissman/Subramanian/Mittal/Sankaran and Halaharivi teach the use of queues it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to combine the prior art elements according to known methods by modifying the teachings of Small, Weissman, Subramanian, Mittal, and Sankaran to utilize multiple queues as taught in Halaharivi to obtain the predictable result of wherein said limiting utilization of the available throughput by large read requests comprises maintaining, by the virtual storage system, a large EC lookup request queue on which those of the large read requests for which respective lookups into the EC are to be performed are placed.
Regarding claim 12, claim 12 is the computer readable medium claim associated with claim 5. Since Small, Weissman, Subramanian, Mittal, Sankaran, and Halaharivi teach all the limitations to claim 5, they also teach all the limitations to claim 12; therefore the rejection to claim 5 also applies to claim 12.
Regarding claim 22, claim 22 is the system claim associated with claim 5. Since Small, Weissman, Subramanian, Mittal, Sankaran, and Halaharivi teach all the limitations to claim 5, they also teach all the limitations to claim 22; therefore the rejection to claim 5 also applies to claim 22.
Claim 15 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Small, Weissman, and Subramanian as applied to claim 9 above, and further in view of Peipelman et al. (US PGPub 2020/0201740, hereafter referred to as Peipelman).
Regarding claim 15, Small, Weissman, and Subramanian teach all the limitations to claim 9. Small, Weissman, and Subramanian do not teach wherein the measure of saturation throughput comprises an average number of operations per second associated with performing lookups into the EC during a predefined or configurable monitoring interval, and wherein the measure of saturation latency comprises an average latency associated with performing the lookups into the EC during the predefined or configurable monitoring interval.
Peipelman teaches wherein the measure of saturation throughput comprises an average number of operations per second associated with performing lookups into the memory during a predefined or configurable monitoring interval, and wherein the measure of saturation latency comprises an average latency associated with performing the lookups into the memory during the predefined or configurable monitoring interval (Paragraphs [0084]-[0086], states that some of the metrics used to measure performance can be throughput, represented by average IO per second, and average latency, both measured over some period of time). Since both Small/Weissman/Subramanian and Peipelman teach measuring throughput and latency It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to substitute the measures of throughput and latency of Small, Weissman, and Subramanian with those of Peipelman to obtain the predictable result of wherein the measure of saturation throughput comprises an average number of operations per second associated with performing lookups into the EC during a predefined or configurable monitoring interval, and wherein the measure of saturation latency comprises an average latency associated with performing the lookups into the EC during the predefined or configurable monitoring interval (as all this does is specify how the metrics are being measured).
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 6, 7, 13, 14, 16, 17, 23, and 24 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
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/NICHOLAS A. PAPERNO/Examiner, Art Unit 2132
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