Ex Parte Pargaonkar et al

Patent Trial and Appeal Board

Oct 18, 2016

13260293 (P.T.A.B. Oct. 18, 2016)

UNITED STA TES p A TENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
APPLICATION NO. FILING DATE FIRST NAMED INVENTOR
13/260,293 09/24/2011 Vishwanath Bandoo Pargaonkar
56436 7590 10/20/2016
Hewlett Packard Enterprise
3404 E. Harmony Road
Mail Stop 79
Fort Collins, CO 80528
UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE
United States Patent and Trademark Office
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Alexandria, Virginia 22313-1450
www .uspto.gov
ATTORNEY DOCKET NO. CONFIRMATION NO.
82853812 6419
EXAMINER
SWARTZ, STEPHENS
ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER
3623
NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE
10/20/2016 ELECTRONIC
Please find below and/or attached an Office communication concerning this application or proceeding.
The time period for reply, if any, is set in the attached communication.
Notice of the Office communication was sent electronically on above-indicated "Notification Date" to the
following e-mail address( es):
hpe.ip.mail@hpe.com
mkraft@hpe.com
chris.mania@hpe.com
PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07)
UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD
Ex parte VISHWANATH BANDOO PARGAONKAR
and
KRISHNA MAHADEV AN RAMAKRISHNAN
Appeal2014-004869
Application 13/260,293
Technology Center 3600
Before HUBERT C. LORIN, ANTON W. PETTING, and
MATTHEWS. MEYERS, Administrative Patent Judges.
PETTING, Administrative Patent Judge.
DECISION ON APPEAL
STATEMENT OF THE CASE1
Vishwanath Bandoo Pargaonkar and Krishna Mahadevan Ramakrishnan
(Appellants) seek review under 35 U.S.C. § 134 of a final rejection of claims
1-14, the only claims pending in the application on appeal. We have
jurisdiction over the appeal pursuant to 35 U.S.C. § 6(b).
1 Our decision will make reference to the Appellants' Appeal Brief ("App.
Br.," filed November 4, 2013) and Reply Brief ("Reply Br.," filed March 12,
2014), and the Examiner's Answer ("Ans.," mailed January 16, 2014), and
Final Action ("Final Act.," mailed June 4, 2013).
Appeal2014-004869
Application 13/260,293
The Appellants invented a monitoring solution that keeps IT informed of
everything happening in the IT environment. Specification 2: 10-12.
An understanding of the invention can be derived from a reading of
exemplary claim 1, which is reproduced below (bracketed matter and some
paragraphing added).
1. A computer-implemented method for automatically selecting
agent-based or agentless monitoring, the method comprising:
[ 1 ] determining,
by a processor,
whether a system is business critical or business non-
critical;
[2] selecting,
and
by the processor,
agent-based monitoring,
and
not agentless monitoring,
in response to a determination that the system is business
critical;
[3] selecting,
by the processor,
agentless monitoring,
and
not agent-based monitoring,
in response to a determination that the system is business
non-critical
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Application 13/260,293
The Examiner relies upon the following prior art:
Chao us 5,964,837
Koclanes US 2004/0243699 Al
Baron US 2006/0064481 Al
Oct. 12, 1999
Dec. 2, 2004
Mar. 23, 2006
Claims 1, 11, and 14 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as
unpatentable over Baron and Chao.
Claims 2-10, 12, and 13 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as
unpatentable over Baron, Chao, and Koclanes.
ISSUES
The issues of obviousness tum primarily on whether the art describes
determining whether a system is business critical or business non-critical.
FACTS PERTINENT TO THE ISSUES
The following enumerated Findings of Fact (FF) are believed to be
supported by a preponderance of the evidence.
Facts Related to Claim Construction
01. The term "business critical system" refers to all systems, failure
of which impacts either business service or revenue. Spec. 4: 16-
17.
Facts Related to Appellants' Disclosure
02. In the agent-based solution, a software module called agent is
installed on each IT system (for example, a server) to be
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monitored. The agents are configured to collect performance
metrics depending on the application and the hardware profile of
the IT system. Spec. 2:19-22.
03. Agentless technology allows monitoring and management of an
IT environment remotely, over the network without having to
install agents on the components to be monitored. The agent-less
solution involves monitoring an IT system remotely by collecting
data. Spec. 3:6-10.
Facts Related to the Prior Art
Baron
04. Baron is directed to operation of a service monitoring and
control facility in a computer system comprising a plurality of
services to be monitored. Baron para. 1.
05. Baron describes operating a service monitoring and control
(SMC) facility in a computer system comprising a plurality of
services to be monitored, the SMC facility performing a plurality
of functions, the method comprising computer implemented acts
during operation of the SMC facility, automatically assessing, at
least in part, an effectiveness of the SMC facility in monitoring
the computer system; and in response to the act of automatically
assessing, automatically changing at least one of the plurality of
functions performed by the SMC facility. Baron para. 11.
06. Any infrastructure that is deemed critical to the delivery of the
end-to-end service should be monitored, usually to the component
level. Some requirements, however, may prove impossible or
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Application 13/260,293
impractical to meet, and so the initiator and the monitoring
manager must agree on what is to be monitored before monitoring
begins. Service monitoring and control is the early warning
system for the entire production environment. For this reason, it
exerts a major influence over all areas of the IT operations
organization and is critical to successful service provisioning.
Baron paras. 126-127.
07. The IT infrastructure that delivers the agreed-on services is
decomposed into infrastructure components (that is, configuration
items) that deliver each service. The attributes of each
configuration item that need monitoring are also identified and a
definition of what constitutes a healthy state is also established for
each configuration item. The actions to be taken or the rules to be
followed in the event that a criterion is met or a threshold
Chao
exceeded are also defined. Performance of the day-to-day
monitoring and control process can begin only after these criteria
or thresholds and rules have been configured within the
monitoring toolset and then deployed and reviewed. These are
critical to the successful operation of the process and to the
delivery of high-availability services. Baron paras. 182-184.
08. Chao is directed to monitoring a network to generate topology
information. Chao, Abstract.
09. Chao describes monitoring the topology of a network using
dynamic switching between a polling mode and an event-
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Application 13/260,293
monitoring mode. The network is of the type having point-to-
point connections between a number of nodes. In the polling
mode, a manager coupled to one of the nodes sends a request to an
agent in each of the nodes for information about operativeness of
the node, its agent, and its connections to other nodes. All of this
connectivity information is collected to generate a topology map,
which may be visually displayed. In the event-monitoring mode,
the manager waits for event-messages from the agents in the
nodes, to update the topology map. The manager switches from
event-monitoring mode (which is more efficient) to polling (which
is more accurate for a brief time after a poll) in response to a
number of factors, including the reachability of the nodes, the
manageability of the nodes, and the consistency of information
received from various nodes. Reachability is an indication of
whether an enabled connection exists from manager to node.
Manageability means whether or not the node responds to requests
from the manager. Chao 2:28--49.
10. Chao describes a management station connected to n I -node 11.
The management station is an applications program executing on a
platform or general purpose processor, and has the functions of ( 1)
executing network operator commands, i.e., those issued by a
human operator, (2) communicating with the managed network 10
by messages, ordinarily using packet technology, (3) retrieving
management information from other nodes, via the
communication links, using messages, such as inquires and
responses, ( 4) presenting the topology of the network in graphical
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form such as on the monitor or by printed output, and (5)
otherwise to display or present network status information. Each
one of the nodes 11-14 has a special management application
called an "agent" running locally. The main functions supported
by an agent are: (1) maintain real time management information
related to the networking functions of its own node, locally, (2)
receive messages from and send messages to the manager station,
(3) respond to requests for information retrieval from the manager,
via these messages, and (4) emit unsolicited notifications
(messages) when defined events such as trunk outage occur. Chao
3:66-4:50.
11. Chao uses a combination of polling and monitoring. Chao
6:33-34.
12. Chao describes a simple method of "polling monitoring" to
maintain the topology map. This type of monitoring is
accomplished by merely periodically performing a snapshot. The
disadvantage is that the accuracy of the topology map depends
upon the granularity of the polling interval, i.e., upon how often
the snapshot is requested. As the frequency of polling is
increased, the accuracy increases, but more network bandwidth is
consumed by management traffic. Thus, a practical limit is
imposed on the snapshot frequency. A second approach to
maintaining the topology map is to have the manager perform a
snapshot to create an initial topology map, and thereafter each
agent emits an "event" message whenever changes to its local
connectivity information are detected. The manager updates the
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topology map based upon received event messages. Should an
agent in a reachable node 11-14 abort without notice, i.e., with no
event message, this must be detected by an "agent liveliness
mechanism" as will be described later. The method of this second
approach is referred to as "event monitoring." Chao 6:44---65.
13. In event monitoring, it is critical that all topology change events
are received by the manager. However, there is no guarantee that
all the agents will always be able to report local connectivity
changes. Consider the case when an agent application aborts (and
thus emits no notice of its failure). If the networking functions of
the node 11-14 continue to operate and all the trunk endpoints
remain enabled, their partner endpoints in adjacent nodes will not
detect any failure. Hence, no topology event messages are emitted
from the adjacent nodes. The manager will not be made aware of
the absent agent until another snapshot is performed. Before the
snapshot, the local connectivity is subject to change. A possible
scenario is that a new trunk endpoint is created in the agentless
node and subsequently forms a trunk connection to a new node.
Since no event is emitted and the new node will not be contacted
by the manager as to where to send information, the topology map
will not be updated to include the new trunk connection and the
new node. Subsequently any other nodes activated and connected
to the new node will not be discovered either. The inconsistency
between the map and the actual network topology that should be
seen by the manager will not be corrected until another snapshot is
performed, which will not happen if the manager is waiting for
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event messages. A blind spot will exist in the network. Thus,
event monitoring has significant accuracy problems in some
situations. Chao 7:22-52.
14. In order to take advantage of event monitoring and yet ensure
the correctness of the resultant topology map, dynamic switching
between polling and event monitoring is provided. When
topology monitoring is started, a snapshot is performed by the
manager as discussed above. The manager then evaluates whether
conditions are conducive to event monitoring. If not, then polling
monitoring will be used and snapshot actions are performed
periodically to create topology maps. At the end of each snapshot,
the conditions for event monitoring are re-evaluated. Chao 7:53-
63.
15. Once in the event monitoring mode, the manager updates the
topology map based on received events to maintain the topology
history. In addition, the manager needs to constantly determine if
event monitoring should be continued; if not, the monitoring mode
is returned to polling. The algorithm for implementing this
dynamic switching uses certain definitions. A node 11-14 is
defined as "reachable" if there is an "enabled" path between the
manager 21 and the node, otherwise it is "unreachable" - note
that this definition is independent of the agent 25. At the end of a
snapshot, the status of each node is either "manageable" or
"unmanageable," depending upon whether the local connectivity
information of the node is successfully retrieved by the manager.
A node is manageable if both of the following are true: (1) the
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node is reachable; and (2) the agent of the node is actively
running. Otherwise the node is said to be unmanageable. Chao
7:64--8:14.
ANALYSIS
We are persuaded by Appellants' argument that the art fails to describe
determining whether a system is business critical or business non-critical.
App. Br. 8-11. The Specification lexicographically defines business critical
systems as all systems, failure of which impacts either business service or
revenue. None of the references refer to such systems, much less refer to
them as business critical.
The Examiner finds that Chao describes selecting between agent and
agentless processing. Final Act. 3--4. Appellants contend that Chao always
uses agents. App. Br. 8. We agree with the Examiner that as the claims
refer to agentless monitoring, and that Chao describes monitoring, not
agentless processing. Chao describes monitoring by polling by a separate
system. In such a case, even though the process that accepts the polling
instructions is nominally labelled as an agent, the monitoring per se is not
done by the nominal agent, but by the separate system.
The problem for the Examiner is that Chao selects between agent and
agentless monitoring in the opposite manner as recited. Chao describes
selecting polling ( agentless) monitoring when a process fails, which is in
that sense a critical condition. Not only is that the opposite of what is
recited, but even that interpretation is further at odds with the lexicographic
definition of business critical.
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The Examiner further cites Chao 6:44--54 in response. Ans. 5. This
portion merely describes the difference between Chao's versions of agent
and agentless monitoring and does not refer to the determination and
selection based on business criticality recited. The Examiner finally finds
that Chao describes selecting by the processor, agent-based monitoring and
non-agentless monitoring based on the criticalness of the node to the rest of
the system. Id. at 6-7. We agree with this as a fact but again this is both
irrelevant to business criticality as defined, and produces the result opposite
that recited by employing agentless processing in critical conditions rather
than non-critical conditions.
CONCLUSIONS OF LAW
The rejection of claims 1, 11, and 14 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as
unpatentable over Baron and Chao is improper.
The rejection of claims 2-10, 12, and 13 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as
unpatentable over Baron, Chao, and Koclanes is improper.
DECISION
The rejection of claims 1-14 is reversed.
REVERSED
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