Appeal 2006-2536
Application 10/611,127
the Examiner, i.e., the failure of the connection between HBA 6b and hub
10b and the connection between HBA 6c and hub 10a. The Examiner's
Drawing 3 labels these failed connections as L3 and L2, respectively.
(Answer 13.) Such a failure would result in the hosts 4a and 4b having
access only to different storage controllers, viz., controller 14a and
controller 14b, respectively.
Burton discloses that "[i]n such case, according to the logic of FIG. 5,
the hosts 4a, b will use the non-preferred path." (Col. 7, ll. 10-12.) "To
eliminate the communication overhead and performance degradation that
results from continually using the non-preferred path," (id. ll. 23-25), the
reference "modif[ies] the preferred path assignment, such that a non-
preferred controller that is presently receiving most of the I/O command
activity for a LUN will be redesignated the preferred controller." (Id. ll. 26-
28.) In the aforementioned situation wherein the hosts 4a and 4b have
access only to controller 14a and controller 14b, respectively, Burton would
designate controllers 14a and 14b as the preferred controllers for hosts 4a
and 4b, respectively. Having designated controller 14a as the active
controller for host 4a in this situation, we agree with the Examiner that the
reference responds to the situation wherein two requesters having access
only to different ones of an active-passive pair of storage controllers by
selecting any one of the controllers as an active controller. Therefore, we
affirm the rejection of claim 1 and of claims 2-6, which fall therewith.
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