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 .
This action is responsive to application filed on 7/28/25. This application is a DIV of 18/148,644 and claims priority from a foreign application dating 10/28/22.
Claims 1-20 are presented for examination.
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) 1-20 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Hutcheson et al (USPN. 2020/0159625) in view of Cox et al (USPN. 2007/0233980).
Regarding claims 1, 9 and 17, Hutcheson teaches a distributed storage system having a primary storage site with a first storage node and a secondary storage site with a second storage node comprising (fig. 11A, storage systems with sync processing):
one or more processing resources (fig. 11A, Server 1106); and
a non-transitory computer-readable medium coupled to the one or more processing resources, having stored therein instructions, which when executed by the one or more processing resources cause the one or more processing resources to (fig. 11A, requests and responses performed by instructions):
block input/output (I/O) operations for first and second storage objects of a batch having a plurality of replicated datasets with each replicated dataset having a synchronous replication relationship between at least one storage object of the first storage node and at least one replicated storage object of a second storage node (par. 275, data blocks are fetched in batches based on associated dataset equated to comprising a relationship. See also pars. 102, 112 and 175, the look ahead optimization looks at current blocks whether changed and delays copying on the merit);
initiate a coalescing consistency point for storage objects of the batch for the first storage node to copy unwritten data in one or more memory systems of the first storage node to one or more physical storage devices of the primary storage site and connected to the first storage node when the storage objects of the batch for the first storage node have completed a snapshot (par. 378, take snapshots and combine them into a single stream communication to be sent over a single connection to the replication target. Paragraphs. 70-71, teach “indication that the operating system has written to a block of the source volume”, and “add an identifier corresponding to the written-to-block to a list of modified blocks” the citation teaches identifying unwritten data and managing it as taught in par. 379, wherein snapshots from a queue are ordered by rules for replications by a queueing module and replication module). To the degree that Hutcheson does not explicitly teach the unwritten data is temporarily stored, storing any data temporarily is well known in storage systems. One such system, Cox, teaches writing data to a temporary storage (fig. 4, pars. 113 and 313, data is written to data field of temporary storage, Cox). It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the field before the effective filing date to store unwritten data to temporary storage as done in Cox by using temporary storage (fig. 4, Cox). One would have been motivated to store data in temporary storage to reduce resources.
Hutcheson modified in view of Cox teach,
independently unblock input/output (I/O) operations for the first storage object in the first replicated dataset and the second storage object in the second replicated dataset to reduce delay in performing I/O operations (pars. 379-380, unblocking data equated to processing/aggregating snapshot, Hutcheson).
2. Hutcheson modified in view of Cox teach, unblocking input/output (I/O) operations for the first storage object at a first time and unblocking input/output (11O) operations for the second storage object at a second time (pars. 379-380, processing/aggregating snapshots at multiple storage systems, Hutcheson).
3. Hutcheson modified in view of Cox teach, wherein a dependent write order consistency of replication operations for the replicated datasets is maintained (par. 46, consistent managing of source volume using copy-on-write mode before copying to the target volume, Hutcheson).
4. Hutcheson modified in view of Cox teach, wherein the coalescing consistency point provides a single consistency point for all storage objects of the batch (par. 378, single stream processing by all nodes, Hutcheson, and further see par. 330, single consistency group, Cox).
5. Hutcheson modified in view of Cox teach, further comprising: performing a create snapshot work operation when no consistency point is currently in progress (par. 84, create restore point by creating snapshots by way of tracking/maintaining a queue of snapshots to replicate, Hutcheson).
6. Hutcheson modified in view of Cox teach, further comprising: determining whether all storage objects of the batch for the first storage node have completed a snapshot, wherein the coalescing consistency point provides a single consistency point for all storage objects of the batch (par. 378, single stream processing by all nodes, Hutcheson, and further see par. 330, single consistency group, Cox).
7. Hutcheson modified in view of Cox teach waiting for all storage objects of the batch for the first storage node to complete the snapshot when all storage objects of the batch for the first storage node have not completed the snapshot and proactively accelerating the coalescing consistency point when all storage objects of the batch for the first storage node have completed the snapshot (pars. 201 and 379, wait before performing backup based on some service being backed up, also note that queueing module has orchestration function and keeps track when to replicate, wherein when ready the orchestration accelerates the consistency, Hutcheson).
8. Hutcheson modified in view of Cox teach, wherein if a consistency point is triggered from a timer, a watermark setting, or a log of the one or more memory systems being full, the entire batch of storage objects for the first storage node is not held to finish (pars. 111 and 127, a crash consistent source volume is time dependent on when the OS entered copy-on-write mode, Hutcheson).
System claims 10-16 and medium claims 18-20 comprise substantially the same subject matter as rejected method claims 2-8 above, and are therefore rejected on the merits.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure in the field of replication and managing data objects:
USPN. 2022/0405262: pars. 20 and 52, replication and relationships
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to MARCIN R FILIPCZYK whose telephone number is (571)272-4019. The examiner can normally be reached M-F 7-4 EST.
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September 3, 2026
/MARCIN R FILIPCZYK/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2153
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