Oracle has introduced the Exadata Storage Expansion Rack, a way to add high performance storage servers to an Oracle Exadata Database Machine.

It is designed for storing massive amounts of structured and unstructured data including historical relational data; backups of Oracle Exadata Database Machine; weblogs;  documents, images, LOBs and XML files.

Standard Oracle Exadata Storage Expansion Rack configurations come with 96 Terabytes to more than 3 Petabytes of Raw Disk Storage using only the included InfiniBand switches. More than 10 Petabytes of user data can be stored using the Exadata Hybrid Columnar Compression which is included.

Up to eight Oracle Exadata Database Machine racks and Oracle Exadata Storage Expansion Racks can be simply connected via InfiniBand cables to achieve single storage grid with a raw disk capacity of 3,360 TB. Larger configurations can be built with additional switches.

"Organisations today are continually challenged with managing and storing the explosive growth in both structured and unstructured data," said Andrew Mendelsohn, senior vice president, Database Server Technologies, Oracle.