InfiniteIO, a startup building a metadata accelerator for NAS arrays, has received $10.3 million B-round funding.
It brings total funding to $13.7 million for the 2012-founded startup led by Mark Cree.
It says its network switch-like technology responds to metadata requests faster than the most advanced all-flash storage arrays, significantly increasing the performance of existing storage systems. It has to do this as, otherwise, there ls no need for its product in an all-flash NAS world.
When metadata indicates files are no longer being accessed, they are migrated to low-cost cloud storage, without sacrificing security or availability.
That makes its technology into more of a file storage controller with HSM pretensions and an overlap with Komprise.
Stuart Larkins, a partner at Chicago Ventures, referred to this in a canned quote: “Infinite io’s metadata-driven approach to data management addresses a large market need by solving the data management problem without impacting storage performance – all other approaches force the customer to compromise performance when managing data at scale and usually involve other drawbacks like capacity-based pricing.”
The B-round was led by former Motorola CEO and Cleversafe Chairman Chris Galvin, and Chris Galvin’s son David of Three Fish Capital and formerly of IBM. It also includes capital from Chicago Ventures, John Anderson, Dougherty and Company, Equus Holdings, and PV Ventures.
Three members of the storage great-and-good society also put in cash:
- Dean Drako, founder and former CEO of Barracuda Networks and founder and current CEO of Eagle Eye Networks,
- Brett Hurt, co-founder and former CEO of Bazaarvoice and current co-founder and CEO of data.world,
- Bill Miller, co-founder and former CTO of Storage Networks and current CEO of X-IO-technologies.
The new money will be used to scale operations globally and help the company grow faster.
