Some of the year-end buzz is around SAS-based storage devices. Early adopters such as HP, LSI Logic, and Left Hand Networks are finding themselves in a more crowded room, as many other vendors are introducing a bagful of SAS-based storage devices for SME customers just before year's end.

SGI, for example, was quick to follow up on those arrays from LSI Logic we discussed . On Monday, they announced their own product line, the , which is based essentially on the same arrays as LSI Logic's product.

Going back a few days, Dell captured the stage at the end of last week with : the PowerVault NX1950, a unified file and volume serving appliance; and the PowerVault MD3000, a direct attached SAS array. Here's a lovely of the two boxes, in case you want a closer look.

If you're wondering if (and how) the NX1950 relates to the low-end Clariion that Dell OEMs for EMC, the answer is ... it doesn't. In fact, the Dell-EMC arrays don't have a built-in file server and can serve only volumes, not shares, to application servers.

Nevertheless, the NX1950 is the result of a partnership, this time with Microsoft, and it runs Microsoft's Windows-based storage server OS. Why am I not calling that server by its common name? Because Microsoft changed the name of its storage server one more time, and now it has become (take a deep breath before saying it) Microsoft Windows Unified Data Storage Server 2003, or WUDSS (pronounced like "woods") for short.