DETAILED ACTION
The present application, filed on or after March 16, 2013, is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA .
This Office Action is responsive to communication(s) filed on 08/20/2025. Claims 1-20 have been examined and are pending in this application.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 102
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)(1) the claimed invention was patented, described in a printed publication, or in public use, on sale, or otherwise available to the public before the effective filing date of the claimed invention.
Claims 1-2, 7, 9-10, and 15-17 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) as being anticipated by Dambal et al. US 2017/0220282 (“Dambal”).
As per independent claim 1, Dambal teaches A method for operating a server controller that controls a storage server including a plurality of storage devices (Data storage methods are disclosed, para 0011), the method comprising:
configuring a first volume as a first area of the plurality of storage devices based on a storage capacity of a storage device having the smallest storage capacity among the plurality of storage devices (“Storage manager firmware 214 may group storage drives 205 into one or more RAID volumes and may be configured to manage the reading and writing of data to storage media 203 in compliance with a particular RAID level to improve storage reliability and/or storage read/write performance.” Para 0040. “adding an additional storage drive to the RAID volume may include adding a compatible storage drive having the smallest capacity that is equal to or greater than a capacity of the smallest drive in the particular set of storage drives.” Para 0015);
configuring a second volume as a second area of the plurality of storage devices except the storage device having the smallest storage capacity, the second area being separated from the first area (“Storage manager firmware 214 may group storage drives 205 into one or more RAID volumes and may be configured to manage the reading and writing of data to storage media 203 in compliance with a particular RAID level to improve storage reliability and/or storage read/write performance.” Para 0040. “if a RAID 5 volume spanning 3 storage drives includes a 100 GB drive and two 80 GB drives and the set of compatible storage drives includes a 75 GB drive, a 90 GB drive, and a 110 GB drive, the 90 GB drive would be selected as the smallest compatible drive having a capacity greater than the capacity of the smallest drive in the RAID volume, 80 GB.” Para 0022);
storing first data in the second volume in response to a write command for writing the first data (“Storage manager firmware 214 may group storage drives 205 into one or more RAID volumes and may be configured to manage the reading and writing of data to storage media 203 in compliance with a particular RAID level to improve storage reliability and/or storage read/write performance.” Para 0040);
distributing the first data into a plurality of stripe units, and storing the plurality of stripe units in the plurality of storage devices (“a data block is striped across two or more of the storage drives” para 0037).
As per dependent claim 2, Dambal discloses the method of claim 1. Dambal teaches further comprising generating parity bits by performing a parity calculation based on the plurality of stripe units in response to the write command for writing the first data, and storing the generated parity bits in the plurality of storage devices (“a data block is striped across two or more of the storage drives and parity information is generated and stored on one of the storage drives.” Para 0037).
As per dependent claim 7, Dambal discloses the method of claim 1. Dambal teaches further comprising replacing a first storage device among the plurality of storage devices with memory blocks in the second volume when the first storage device among the plurality of storage devices is determined as a bad storage device (“Hot spare storage drive 240 is a storage drive that may be used to replace a failing or failed storage drive in a RAID system.” Para 0038).
As per claims 9-10 and 17, these claims are respectively rejected based on arguments provided above for similar rejected claims 1-2 and 7. See FIG. 1 of Dambal for an Information Handling System (HIS) 100 which may be a server, para 0027 of Dambal.
As per claims 16-17, these claims are respectively rejected based on arguments provided above for similar rejected claims 1-2. See FIG. 1 of Dambal for an Information Handling System (HIS) 100 which may be a server, para 0027 of Dambal.
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 3-6, 11-14, and 18-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Dambal in view of O’Krafka et al. US 2017/0242790 (“O’Krafka”).
As per dependent claim 3, Dambal discloses the method of claim 1. Dambal may not explicitly disclose, but in an analogous art in the same field of endeavor, O’Krafka teaches wherein the server controller includes a mapping table representing a mapping between a logical address received from a host server and physical addresses of the plurality of storage devices with respect to the second area (“computer system 110 also maintains a mapping of logical addresses to physical addresses in a physical address space of storage device 120;” para 0076).
Given the teaching of O’Krafka, it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to further modify the scope of the invention of Dambal with “wherein the server controller includes a mapping table representing a mapping between a logical address received from a host server and physical addresses of the plurality of storage devices with respect to the second area”. The motivation would be that the invention improves the life of a flash-based storage system, para 0004 of O’Krafka.
As per dependent claim 4, Dambal in combination with O’Krafka discloses the method claim 3. Dambal may not explicitly disclose, but O’Krafka teaches further comprising providing, to each of the plurality of storage devices, an unmap command to remove a mapping between the logical address received from the host server and the physical addresses of the plurality of storage devices with respect to the second area (“unmap commands are sent by computer system 110 to storage device 120;” para 0076).
The same motivation that was utilized for combining Dambal and O’Krafka as set forth in claim 3 is equally applicable to claim 4.
As per dependent claim 5, Dambal discloses the method of claim 1. Dambal may not explicitly disclose, but in an analogous art in the same field of endeavor, O’Krafka teaches further comprising replacing a bad block in the first area with a memory block of the second volume (“bad block replacement” para 0149).
Given the teaching of O’Krafka, it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to further modify the scope of the invention of Dambal with “further comprising replacing a bad block in the first area with a memory block of the second volume”. The motivation would be that the invention improves the life of a flash-based storage system, para 0004 of O’Krafka.
As per dependent claim 6, Dambal in combination with O’Krafka discloses the method claim 5. Dambal may not explicitly disclose, but O’Krafka teaches wherein the replacing of the bad block in the first area with the memory block the second volume further includes remapping the bad block in the first area to the memory block of the second volume (“bad block replacement … in which case the contiguous sequence of logical addresses for the logical stripe will correspond to two or more contiguous sequences of physical addresses in the physical address space of the storage devices.” para 0149).
The same motivation that was utilized for combining Dambal and O’Krafka as set forth in claim 5 is equally applicable to claim 6.
As per dependent claims 11-14, these claims are respectively rejected based on arguments provided above for similar rejected dependent claims 3-6.
As per dependent claims 18-20, these claims are respectively rejected based on arguments provided above for similar rejected dependent claims 3-5.
Claim 8 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Dambal in view of Roberts US 2020/0042390 (“Roberts”).
As per dependent claim 8, Dambal discloses the method of claim 1. Dambal may not explicitly disclose, but in an analogous art in the same field of endeavor, Roberts teaches further comprising providing a storage capacity request command to the plurality of storage devices and receiving storage capacity information from the plurality of storage devices, in which the storage capacity information indicates storage space for user data used for configuring the first and second volumes (“data offload 332.3 may query one or more peer storage devices in the peer group to locate available capacity and then use a peer data transfer command to move the recovered data to the new storage location.” Para 0095).
Given the teaching of Roberts, it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to further modify the scope of the invention of Dambal with “further comprising providing a storage capacity request command to the plurality of storage devices and receiving storage capacity information from the plurality of storage devices, in which the storage capacity information indicates storage space for user data used for configuring the first and second volumes”. The motivation would be that the invention improves scalability as the number and capacity of storage devices increase, para 0003 of Roberts.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to ZUBAIR AHMED whose telephone number is (571)272-1655. The examiner can normally be reached 7:30AM - 5:00PM EST.
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/ZUBAIR AHMED/Examiner, Art Unit 2132
/HOSAIN T ALAM/Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2132
