DETAILED ACTION
Notice of Pre-AIA or AI
A Status
The present application, filed on or after March 16, 2013, is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA .
Claims 1-20 are pending for examination in instant application.
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statement (IDS) submitted on 03/02/2022 is/are in compliance with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.97. Accordingly, the information disclosure statement is being considered by the examiner.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103T
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.
The factual inquiries for establishing a background for determining obviousness under 35 U.S.C. 103 are summarized as follows:
1. Determining the scope and contents of the prior art.
2. Ascertaining the differences between the prior art and the claims at issue.
3. Resolving the level of ordinary skill in the pertinent art.
4. Considering objective evidence present in the application indicating obviousness or non-obviousness.
Claim(s) 1-4, 6-11, 13-18 and 20 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Gupta et al. (Pub. No.: US 2021/0297398 A1), hereinafter “Gupta” in view of Tang et al. (Pub. No.: US 2023/0231741 A1), hereinafter “Tang”.
As to claim 1. Gupta discloses, a non-transitory computer readable medium having stored thereon a sequence of instructions which, when stored in memory and executed by a processor cause the processor to perform acts for implementing a storage I/O service handler in a containerized system (Gupta, Abstract and [0013]), the acts comprising:
configuring the storage I/O service handler as one or more executable pods (Gupta, fig.7B,C, [0099], executable container instance 750. Configuration 752 includes an operating system layer (as shown) that performs addressing functions such as providing access to external requestors (e.g., user virtual machines or other processes) via an IP address (e.g., “P.Q.R.S”, as shown). Storage I/O service handler i.e. containerized service VM / container instance.) for which its cloud-based logical NIC is given an initial IP address by the containerized system (Gupta, fig. 7-A, B,C, [0099], Container IP address P.Q.R.S and [0083], CVM IP address 710 (fig.7a). Cloud-based logic NIC corresponds to the network interface port and container IP address. Gupta shows that the containerized system assigns an IP address to each container / pod.); n allocated
identifying one or more IP addresses that are available for use in the containerized system (Gupta, fig.7B,C, [0099], executable container instance 750. Configuration 752 includes an operating system layer (as shown) that performs addressing functions such as providing access to external requestors (e.g., user virtual machines or other processes) via an IP address (e.g., “P.Q.R.S”, as shown).
Gupta however is silent to disclose explicitly, “reserved IP address” or assigning, at runtime, the one or more of the reserved IP addresses to the one or more executable pods.
Tang discloses in the same field of endeavor including, reserved IP addresses (Tang, [0086], each pod is allocated an IP address from an IP address pool allocated to the namespace associated with the subnet to which the pod belongs.);
assigning, at runtime, the one or more of the reserved IP addresses to the one or more executable pods (Tang, fig.10, [0086], the worker node executes a set of one or more existing pods, while in other embodiments, the new pod is a first pod to execute on the worker node.).
Therefore, before the effective filing date of the instant application it would have been obvious to one of the ordinary skilled in the art to incorporate the teachings of “Tang” into those of “Gupta” to provide a method of sending data in a network that includes multiple worker nodes, each worker node executing at least one set of containers, a gateway interface, and a virtual local area network (VLAN) tunnel interface. The method configures the gateway interface of each worker node to associate the gateway interface with multiple subnets. Each subnet is associated with a namespace, a first worker node executes a first set of containers of a first namespace, and a second worker node executes a second set of containers of the first namespace and a third set of containers of a second namespace.
As to claim 2. The combined system of Gupta and Tang discloses the invention as applied to claim above including, wherein the storage I/O service handler implements all or portions of at least one of, NFS, Samba, iSCSI, NVMe, or CIFS (Gupta, [0083], controller virtual machine instance receives block I/O storage requests as network file system (NFS) requests in the form of NFS requests 702,).
As to claim 3. The combined system of Gupta and Tang discloses the invention as applied to claim above including, further comprising instructions which, when stored in memory and executed by the processor cause the processor to perform further acts of configuring multiple iSCSI targets as one or more executable pods that are assigned an initial IP address by the containerized system (Gupta, [0083], internet small computer storage interface (iSCSI) block I0 requests in the form of iSCSI requests 703. This shows the system implements iSCSI as part of its storage I/O stack. Thus, the reference teaches iSCSI targets.).
As to claim 4. The combined system of Gupta and Tang discloses the invention as applied to claim above including, further comprising instructions which, when stored in memory and executed by the processor cause the processor to perform further acts of implementing a container network interface (CNI) function to implement network connectivity (Gupta, fig.7-B,C [0090], The shown computing platform 706 is interconnected to the Internet 748 through one or more network interface ports (e.g., network interface port 723.sub.1 and network interface port 723.sub.2). Configuration 751 can be addressed through one or more network interface ports using an IP address. A network interface port receives and transmits network protocol packets through a containerized networking subsystem and that’s exactly what CNI plugin implements.).
As to claim 6. The combined system of Gupta and Tang discloses the invention as applied to claim above including, wherein at least some of the one or more reserved IP addresses are static IP addresses (Tan, [0006], static IP addresses).
As to claim 7. The combined system of Gupta and Tang discloses the invention as in claim above including, wherein the static IP addresses retain at least a subset of attributes across lifetimes of an execution unit (Gupta, fig.7B, [0009], Container IP Address P.Q.R.S. This IP address is bound to the execution unit’s logical NIC, and the NIC persists across the lifetime of the container instance. These attributes are not recreated per I/O operations, they persist for the lifetime of the container instance.).
As to claims, 8 and 15 are rejected for same rationale as applied to claim 1 above.
As to claims, 9 and 16 are rejected for same rationale as applied to claim 2 above.
As to claims, 10 and 17 are rejected for same rationale as applied to claim 3 above.
As to claims, 11 and 18 are rejected for same rationale as applied to claim 4 above.
As to claims, 13 and 20 are rejected for same rationale as applied to claim 6 above.
As to claims, 14 are rejected for same rationale as applied to claim 7 above.
Claim(s) 5, 12 and 19 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Gupta et al. (Pub. No.: US 2021/0297398 A1), hereinafter “Gupta” in view of Tang et al. (Pub. No.: US 2023/0231741 A1), hereinafter “Tang” and further in view of Rakesh et al. (Patent No.: US 11201955 B1), hereinafter “Rak”.
As to claim 5. The combined system of Gupta and Tang discloses the invention as applied to claim above including, reserved IP addresses that are assigned to the one or more executable pods (Tang, [0083], pods belonging to the same subnet will receive IP addresses from an IP address pool allocated to their associated namespace, while pods belonging to different subnets will receive IP addresses from different IP address pools.).
Gupta and Tang however are silent to disclose explicitly, acts of advising a leader process.
Rak discloses a similar concept in the same field of endeavor including, acts of advising a leader process (Rak, fig. 55B, col.62, lines 26-46, describes an agent collecting pod IP information and reporting that information back to a backend process/platform.).
Therefore, before the effective filing date of the instant application it would have been obvious to one of the skilled in the art to incorporate the teachings of “Rak” into those of “Gupta and Tang” to provide a master controller which can assume the leader node responsibilities and can perform and make stable decisions to run the pods independently with assigning identifiers and automating the runtime updates when needed.
As to claims, 12 and 19 are rejected for same rationale as applied to claim 5 above.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure. Please see the attached PTO-892.
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/Tauqir Hussain/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2449
