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 .
Priority
Applicant’s claim for the benefit of a prior-filed application, 14/684183 filed on 04/10/2015, under 35 U.S.C. 119(e) or under 35 U.S.C. 120, 121, 365(c), or 386(c) is acknowledged.
Claim Objections
Claim 9 is objected to because of the following informalities: the imitation recited in claim 9 “flashsystem” appears to be missing a space between the two words.
Appropriate correction is required.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 102
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 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)(2) the claimed invention was described in a patent issued under section 151, or in an application for patent published or deemed published under section 122(b), in which the patent or application, as the case may be, names another inventor and was effectively filed before the effective filing date of the claimed invention.
Claim(s) 1, 9, 13, and 20 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(2) as being anticipated by Ninose et al. (US2016/0011786), hereinafter Ninose.
Regarding claims 1, 13, and 20, taking claim 1 as exemplary, Ninose teaches a storage system (Ninose, [0036], storage system 10; Fig.1) comprising:
a plurality of storage devices (Ninose, [0037], The storage system 10 includes a plurality of storage devices (FMPKs 30, HDDs 50, and the like));
a storage system controller (Ninose, Fig.1, storage controller 20), operatively coupled and external to the plurality of storage devices (Ninose, [0037], The storage system 10 includes a plurality of storage devices (FMPKs 30, HDDs 50, and the like) and the storage controller 20 coupled to the plurality of storage devices; Fig.1), configured to:
manage data storage across the plurality of storage devices using one or more Redundant Array of Inexpensive Drives (RAID) configurations (Ninose, [0036], The storage system 10 configures, according to the RAID level set from the management apparatus 12, the RAID group 29 in which data is stored; [0046]);
provide storage virtualization to present a set of storage devices of the plurality of storage devices as a pool of storage resources (Ninose, [0046], The RAID group 29 is configured from a plurality of storage devices. A plurality of logical volumes (or one logical volume) 140 are created on the basis of the RAID group 29 … The logical volume 140 configuring a pool 100 is divided into a plurality of storage areas (hereinafter referred to as “chunks” for convenience). The chunk is allocated to a virtual volume 160 (see FIG. 2) from the pool 100; [0051], The storage controller 20 manages the plurality of chunks included in the respective plurality of logical volumes 140 collectively as one pool 100. That is, the pool 100 includes the plurality of chunks; Fig.2); and
store data in the set of storage devices (Ninose, [0036], the RAID group 29 in which data is stored).
Claims 13 and 20 have similar limitations as claim 1 and they are rejected for the similar reasons.
Regarding claim 9, Ninose teaches all the features with respect to claim 1 as outlined above. Ninose further teaches the storage system of claim 1, wherein the storage system comprises a flashsystem (Ninose, [0045], A storage medium of the FMPK 30 is configured from a plurality of FM (Flash Memory) chips).
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.
Claim(s) 2, 10, and 14 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Ninose as applied to claims 1 and 13 respectively above, in view of Ouchi et al. (US2017/0102874), hereinafter Ouchi.
Regarding claims 2 and 14, taking claim 2 as exemplary, Ninose teaches all the features with respect to claim 1 as outlined above. Ninose does not explicitly teach the storage system of claim 1, wherein the storage system controller supports Non-Volatile Memory Express over Fabrics (NVMe) protocols, as claimed.
However, Ninose in view of Ouchi teaches the storage system of claim 1, wherein the storage system controller supports Non-Volatile Memory Express over Fabrics (NVMe) protocols (Ouchi, [0082], [0095], The storage controller passes an NVMe command from the server computer to the flash memory device; [0188]; Fig. 6).
It would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified Ninose to incorporate teachings of Ouchi to have a storage controller to support NVMe protocol when processing I/O requests. A person of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to combine the teachings of Ninose with Ouchi because it improves the storage system disclosed in Ninose by allowing a storage controller to support NVMe communication protocol in order to reduce flash memory access latency in the storage system (Ouchi, [0024]).
Claim 14 has similar limitations as claim 2 and is rejected for the similar reasons.
Regarding claim 10, Ninose teaches all the features with respect to claim 1 as outlined above. Ninose does not explicitly teach the storage system of claim 1, wherein the storage system controller is configured to: store the data in the set of storage devices in accordance with one or more tiering policies, as claimed.
However, Ninose in view of Orikasa teaches the storage system of claim 1, wherein the storage system controller is configured to: store the data in the set of storage devices in accordance with one or more tiering policies (Ouchi, [0345], application of the tiering to NUs allows a plurality of the server computer 2 to share automatically tiered NSs. Furthermore, for example, placing frequently accessed data on a high-performance tier allows access performance to be improved, and placing infrequently accessed data on a low-priced tier enables a reduction in cost for storage capacities).
It would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified Ninose to incorporate teachings of Ouchi to store frequently accessed data on a high-performance storage tier and infrequently accessed data on a low-priced tier. A person of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to combine the teachings of Ninose with Ouchi because it improves efficiency and performance of the storage system disclosed in Ninose by storing specific data in a specific storage tier based on data characteristic as well as tiering policy.
Claim(s) 3-4 and 15-16 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Ninose as applied to claims 1 and 13 respectively above, and further in view of Singhai et al. (US2016/0162202), hereinafter Singhai.
Regarding claims 3 and 15, taking claim 3 as exemplary, Ninose teaches all the features with respect to claim 1 as outlined above. Ninose does not explicitly teach the storage system of claim 1, wherein the set of storage devices offload compression to the storage system controller, as claimed.
However, Ninose in view of Singhal teaches the storage system of claim 1, wherein the set of storage devices offload compression to the storage system controller (Singhal, [0002], it is desirable for SSD controllers to be flexible to perform or help the implementation of data services such as compression, encryption, remote replication, and recovery; [0020], According to aspects of the present disclosure, an SSD controller, for example storage controller 120; Fig.1, storage controller 120).
It would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified Ninose to incorporate teachings of Singhai to offload data compression operations to a storage controller. A person of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to combine the teachings of Ninose with Singhal because it improves efficiency and performance of the storage system disclosed in Ninose by allowing a storage controller to share some of the workload from storage devices.
Claim 15 has similar limitations as claim 3 and is rejected for the similar reasons.
Regarding claims 4 and 16, taking claim 4 as exemplary, Ninose teaches all the features with respect to claim 1 as outlined above. Ninose does not explicitly teach the storage system of claim wherein the set of storage devices offload encryption to the storage controller, as claimed.
However, Ninose in view of Singhal teaches the storage system of claim wherein the set of storage devices offload encryption to the storage controller (Singhal, [0002], it is desirable for SSD controllers to be flexible to perform or help the implementation of data services such as compression, encryption, remote replication, and recovery; [0020], According to aspects of the present disclosure, an SSD controller, for example storage controller 120; Fig.1, storage controller 120).
It would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified Ninose to incorporate teachings of Singhai to offload data encryption operations to a storage controller. A person of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to combine the teachings of Ninose with Singhal because it improves efficiency and performance of the storage system disclosed in Ninose by allowing a storage controller to share some of the workload from storage devices.
Claim 16 has similar limitations as claim 4 and is rejected for the similar reasons.
Claim(s) 5 and 17 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Ninose as applied to claims 1 and 13 respectively above, and further in view of Wantanabe et al. (US2017/0024142), hereinafter Wantanabe.
Regarding claims 5 and 17, taking claim 5 as exemplary, Ninose teaches all the features with respect to claim 1 as outlined above. Ninose does not explicitly teach the storage system of claim 1, wherein the storage system controller is further configured to provide deduplication services to the set of storage devices, as claimed.
However, Ninose in view of Wantanabe teaches the storage system of claim 1, wherein the storage system controller is further configured to provide deduplication services to the set of storage devices (Watanabe, [0006], the storage device or the controller has a storage device level deduplication function, and when storing the write data to the storage device, control is performed to store to the storage device only the data that differs from the data stored in the storage device; [0062], The deduplication processing can be executed within the PDEV 17, or the controller 11 itself can execute the deduplication process; [0064]).
It would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified Ninose to incorporate teachings of Wantanabe to offload data deduplication operations to a storage controller. A person of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to combine the teachings of Ninose with Singhal because it improves efficiency and performance of the storage system disclosed in Ninose by allowing a storage controller to share some of the workload from storage devices.
Claim 17 has similar limitations as claim 5 and is rejected for the similar reasons.
Claim(s) 6 and 18 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Ninose as applied to claims 1 and 13 respectively above, and further in view of Kobayashi (US2012/0131296), hereinafter Kobayashi.
Regarding claims 6 and 18, Ninose teaches all the features with respect to claim 1 as outlined above. Ninose does not explicitly teach the storage system of claim 1, wherein the storage system controller is configured to provide application aware data services, as claimed.
However, Ninose in view of Kobayashi teaches the storage system of claim 1, wherein the storage system controller is configured to provide application aware data services (Kobayashi, [0030], the controller 400; [0032], The AP management table 410 is an area where information about applications and information about storage resources allocated to the applications are stored; [0038], a column “AP Type” 41015 for expressing the type of the application, and a column “APID” 41011 for identifying the application; Fig.5).
It would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified Ninose to incorporate teachings of Kobayashi to provide information about applications by a memory controller. A person of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to combine the teachings of Ninose with Kobayashi because it improves efficiency of the storage system disclosed in Ninose by tracking management information of applications that access the storage system in order to meet specific requirements associated with the applications.
Claim 18 has similar limitations as claim 6 and is rejected for the similar reasons.
Claim(s) 7 and 19 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Ninose as applied to claims 1 and 13 respectively above, and further in view of Chen et al. (US2002/0166031), hereinafter Chen.
Regarding claims 7 and 19, taking claim 7 as exemplary, Ninose teaches all the features with respect to claim 1 as outlined above. Ninose does not explicitly teach the storage system of claim 1, wherein the set of storage devices are operatively coupled to a plurality of storage nodes and wherein the plurality of storage nodes is configured to communicate with one another as a storage cluster, as claimed.
However, Ninose in view of Chen teaches the storage system of claim 1, wherein the set of storage devices are operatively coupled to a plurality of storage nodes (Chen, [0024], Typically, a storage node 106 comprises … a device end interface that enables communication across the device storage area network 110 with disks 108 … The hosts 102, nodes 106, and disks 108 can be interconnected to other devices via a local area network, wide area network, internet, or other means of providing communications … all of the storage nodes 106 may have a direct access path to any disk 108 … the data stored on disks 108 may be protected through either software or hardware RAID (redundant array of independent disks) technology) and wherein the plurality of storage nodes is configured to communicate with one another as a storage cluster (Chen, [0023], a number of cache storage nodes 106 in a storage cluster 114; [0024], Typically, a storage node 106 comprises … and an inter-node interface that enables communication with other storage nodes 106).
It would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified Ninose to incorporate teachings of Chen to couple RAID disks to a plurality of storage nodes in a cluster and the clustered storage nodes can communicate with each other. A person of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to combine the teachings of Ninose with Chen because it improves efficiency of the storage system disclosed in Ninose by allowing the storage nodes/devices to share workload issued from hosts.
Claim 19 has similar limitations as claim 7 and is rejected for the similar reasons.
Claim(s) 8 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Ninose as applied to claim 1 above, and further in view of Kagan et al. (US 2015/0261434), hereinafter Kagan.
Regarding claim 8, Ninose teaches all the features with respect to claim 1 as outlined above. Ninose does not explicitly teach the storage system of claim 1, wherein the plurality of storage devices comprises one or more managed flash storage devices comprising Non-Volatile Memory Express (NVMe) interfaces, as claimed.
However, Ninose in view of Kagan teaches the storage system of claim 1, wherein the plurality of storage devices comprises one or more managed flash storage devices comprising Non-Volatile Memory Express (NVMe) interfaces (Kagan, [0031], while storage servers 26 comprise SSDs that are likewise equipped with NVMe interfaces).
It would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified Ninose to incorporate teachings of Kegan to include flash memory storage devices, such as Flash Memory Package 30 (in Ninose), that are equipped with NVMe interfaces. A person of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to combine the teachings of Ninose with Kagan because it improves performance of the storage system disclosed in Ninose by supporting NVMe communication protocol for lower access latency in flash-based storage media.
Claim(s) 11 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Ninose as applied to claim 1 above, and further in view of Mangan et al. (US2016/0154864), hereinafter Mangan.
Regarding claim 11, Ninose teaches all the features with respect to claim 1 as outlined above. Ninose does not explicitly teach the storage system of claim 1, wherein the storage system controller is configured to: detect a presence of ransomware in the storage system; and in response to detecting the presence of the ransomware, perform one or more remedial actions, as claimed.
However, Ninose in view of Mangan teaches the storage system controller is configured to: detect a presence of ransomware in the storage system; and in response to detecting the presence of the ransomware, perform one or more remedial actions (Mangan, [0002], ransomware, [0024], Example embodiments of the systems, apparatuses, devices, and methods described herein can generally transform unstructured or semi-structured ESI from an endpoint computing device into a usable structured form for the purpose of identifying ESI, enumerating general bytestreams and remediating malware by way of an agent managing a local index of all file system objects on the endpoint computing device. Using a centralized command computing system and agents executing on endpoint computing devices, described in more detail below, ESI, general bytestreams and malware can be identified, collected and//or deleted and processed; [0025], an agent can either be embedded in various computing devices, such as solid state drives, hard disk drives, storage controllers).
It would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified Ninose to incorporate teachings of Mangan to detect a malware/ransomware by a controller and perform one or more remedial action in response to the detection. A person of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to combine the teachings of Ninose with Mangan because it improves security of the storage system disclosed in Ninose by detecting and removing malicious malware from the storage system.
Claim(s) 12 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Ninose as applied to claim 1 above, and further in view of Lyer et al. (US8,001,318) hereinafter Lyer.
Regarding claim 12, Ninose teaches all the features with respect to claim 1 as outlined above. Ninose does not explicitly teach the storage system of claim 1, wherein the storage system controller is configured to: store the data in the set of storage devices based on wear leveling across the set of storage devices, as claimed.
However, Ninose in view of Lyer teaches the storage system of claim 1, wherein the storage system controller is configured to: store the data in the set of storage devices based on wear leveling across the set of storage devices (Lyer, col.8, line 64 – col.9, line 14, the storage devices 125 comprise disks that are configured into a plurality of RAID (redundant array of independent disks) groups; col.13, lines 42-51; col.15, lines 6-22).
It would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified Ninose to incorporate teachings of Lyer to store data based on wear leveling across a set or RAID storage devices. A person of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to combine the teachings of Ninose with Lyer because it improves efficiency of the storage system disclosed in Ninose by storing data according to wear counts in order to spread wear more evenly among erase-units of the storage system.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
Lida (US2013/0254483) teaches a plurality of pool volumes provided by RAID storge devices and the plurality of pool volumes are managed as a signal virtual volume pool of pages.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to NANCI N WONG whose telephone number is (571)272-4117. The examiner can normally be reached Monday-Friday 9am -6pm.
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/NANCI N WONG/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2137
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