Lenovo ThinkSystem DM5000F vs NetApp AFF A250
Side-by-side specifications from the vendors' own documents. The Lenovo ThinkSystem DM5000F is a 2U unified all-flash SAN and NAS storage array powered by ONTAP software. 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.
| Lenovo ThinkSystem DM5000F | NetApp AFF A250 | |
|---|---|---|
| Brand | Lenovo | NetApp |
| Status | current | end-of-sale |
| Released | Sep 2018 | Oct 2020 |
| Form factor | 2U rack | 2U rack |
| Controllers | Dual active-active ONTAP controller canisters with 64GB memory and 8GB NVRAM | — |
| Drive bays | 24x 2.5-inch SFF hot-swap all-flash SAS SSD bays; expands up to 144 all-flash SSDs | Up to 24x internal 2.5-inch NVMe SSDs in 2U chassis, expandable with 1x NS224 shelf |
| Host interfaces | 8x 16Gb FC or 10GbE SFP+ unified target adapter (UTA2) ports, plus 4x 10GBASE-T ports | — |
| Protocols | Fibre Channel, iSCSI, NFS, SMB/CIFS, and S3 object storage APIs | — |
| Features | Inline data reduction (3:1 to 5:1 typical ratio), Snapshot copies, SnapMirror replication, FlexClone | — |
| Power supply | Dual redundant hot-swap AC power supplies | — |
| Management | Lenovo ONTAP System Manager and XClarity | NetApp ONTAP 9 |
| 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) |
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