NetApp AFF A90 vs Pure Storage FlashBlade //S500
Side-by-side specifications from the vendors' own documents. The NetApp AFF A90 is an active-active enterprise all-flash storage array designed for demanding transaction processing, virtualization clusters, and data analytics. The Pure Storage FlashBlade //S500 is a high-performance scale-out file and object storage system engineered for AI training, deep learning, GPU clusters, and high-frequency analytics pipelines.
| NetApp AFF A90 | Pure Storage FlashBlade //S500 | |
|---|---|---|
| Brand | NetApp | Pure Storage |
| Status | current | current |
| Released | May 2024 | Jun 2022 |
| Form factor | 4U rack | 5U modular chassis |
| Controller configuration | Dual active-active controllers in 4U enclosure | — |
| Processor | Intel Xeon Scalable multi-core processors per controller | Dual socket Intel Xeon processors per compute blade |
| Memory | 512GB system memory per HA pair with NVRAM write caching | — |
| Drive bays | Up to 48x internal NVMe SSDs in 4U chassis, expandable with NS224 shelves | — |
| Supported drives | NVMe TLC SSDs (1.9TB to 30.7TB) | — |
| Maximum raw capacity | Up to 260PB in a 24-node cluster | Tens of petabytes across scale-out chassis clusters |
| Host connectivity | PCIe expansion slots supporting 100GbE, 25GbE, 10GbE, 64Gb FC, and 32Gb FC | — |
| Storage protocols | NVMe/FC, NVMe/TCP, FC, iSCSI, NFS, SMB, S3 | — |
| Clustering | Up to 24 nodes (12 HA pairs) | — |
| Management | NetApp ONTAP 9 | Pure1 and Purity REST API |
| Chassis form factor | — | 5U modular chassis supporting up to 10 compute blades and 40 DFMs |
| Operating system | — | Pure Storage Purity//FB |
| Storage media | — | DirectFlash QLC Modules (24.7TB, 49TB, 75TB) |
| Networking | — | Dual Fabric Modules providing 100GbE and 400GbE uplinks |
| Protocols | — | NFSv3, SMB, S3 Object |
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