Dell Unity XT 480F vs NetApp AFF A250
Side-by-side specifications from the vendors' own documents. The Dell Unity XT 480F is a mid-tier all-flash unified storage array designed for mission-critical relational databases, virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI), and high-concurrency cloud environments. The NetApp AFF A250 is an entry enterprise all-NVMe storage array packing 24 hot-swap NVMe drive bays into a 2U dual-controller enclosure.
| Dell Unity XT 480F | NetApp AFF A250 | |
|---|---|---|
| Brand | Dell | NetApp |
| Status | current | end-of-sale |
| Released | May 2019 | Oct 2020 |
| Form factor | 2U rack | 2U rack |
| Cpu platform | Dual active-active storage processors (SPs), Intel Xeon Skylake 8-core (1.8 GHz) per SP | — |
| Memory max (GB) | 192 | — |
| Drive bays | Up to 25x 2.5-inch SAS SSDs in base DPE; expands up to 750 all-flash SSDs across DAEs | Up to 24x internal 2.5-inch NVMe SSDs in 2U chassis, expandable with 1x NS224 shelf |
| Raw capacity | Up to 4.0 PB raw capacity (up to 12 PB effective with 3:1 data reduction) | — |
| Network onboard | 4-port 10GbE / 1GbE; 2x I/O module slots per SP supporting 16Gb/32Gb FC or 25GbE optical | — |
| Power supply | Dual redundant hot-plug 1800W Platinum power supplies | — |
| Controller configuration | — | Dual controllers in 2U enclosure |
| Processor | — | Intel Xeon processors per controller |
| Memory | — | 128GB system memory per HA pair with NVRAM |
| Supported drives | — | NVMe TLC SSDs (960GB, 1.9TB, 3.8TB, 7.6TB, 15.3TB) |
| Maximum raw capacity | — | Up to 57PB in a 24-node cluster |
| Host connectivity | — | Onboard 25GbE/10GbE and PCIe expansion for 32Gb FC, 25GbE, 10GbE |
| Storage protocols | — | NVMe/FC, NVMe/TCP, FC, iSCSI, NFS, SMB |
| Clustering | — | Up to 24 nodes (12 HA pairs) |
| Management | — | NetApp ONTAP 9 |
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