A new device named "V-CX" is being planned to be launched by EMC by the month of April. This device will be a combined SAN/NAS product for reviving the CLARiiON and Celerra's best bits. SAN/NAS devices are generally termed "unified storage".

NetApp is also depicting its unified storage cred through a nifty graphic on its home page.

It is being predicted that the upcoming next-generation Clariion, in order to have a file-based storage, can have CIFS and NFS apart from iSCSI, Fibre Channel block-based storage protocols and FCoE. It is also expected that doing this will push Clariion closer to the Celerra unifying NAS, Fibre Channel and iSCSI.

Preston de Guise also reviewed next release of NetWorker saying that the foreseen release is a big and important and a much awaited one, which promises to meet expectations of the users who will have to wait for its launch.

Also, on blogs, IBM's XIV product is being talked about much this week regarding its efficiency of tackling the problem of drive failure. Another in the queue as a topic of discussion for the week is HP's Storage Tech Day.