NetApp AFF A250 vs Pure Storage FlashArray //X20
Side-by-side specifications from the vendors' own documents. 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. The Pure Storage FlashArray //X20 was a 3U enterprise all-NVMe storage array designed to consolidate virtual machines, virtual desktops, and transaction databases.
| NetApp AFF A250 | Pure Storage FlashArray //X20 | |
|---|---|---|
| Brand | NetApp | Pure Storage |
| Status | end-of-sale | end-of-sale |
| Released | Oct 2020 | May 2018 |
| Form factor | 2U rack | 3U rack |
| Controller configuration | Dual controllers in 2U enclosure | Dual active-active controllers in 3U enclosure |
| Processor | Intel Xeon processors per controller | — |
| Memory | 128GB system memory per HA pair with NVRAM | — |
| Drive bays | Up to 24x internal 2.5-inch NVMe SSDs in 2U chassis, expandable with 1x NS224 shelf | — |
| 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 | Pure1 and Purity GUI |
| Operating system | — | Pure Storage Purity//FA |
| Raw capacity | — | Up to 263TB raw with DirectFlash shelf expansion |
| Effective capacity | — | Up to 800TB effective with inline data reduction |
| Drive media | — | DirectFlash Modules (4.5TB, 9.1TB, 18.2TB) |
| Connectivity | — | 16Gb/32Gb FC, 10GbE/25GbE iSCSI, and NVMe-oF (RoCEv2) |
| Nvram | — | Dual internal NVRAM modules |
| Data reduction | — | Inline deduplication and LZ4/Huffman compression |
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