Containerized services are so different from traditional software in design that even the most basic building blocks of application development are being reworked to better address their operational requirements. In the database layer, the effort is led by a European startup called Crate Technology GmbH, which has secured a $4 million investment from Docker Inc. founder Solomon Hykes and three institutional backers to expand the adoption of its namesake columnar store.

The open-source platform has already racked up more than 350,000 downloads since launching thanks to the relative ease with which it can be deployed on large-scale container clusters. While most competing alternatives require setting up a master server to coordinate the instances in an implementation, every Crate node is capable of operating independently, which means less time has to be spent on tinkering with configuration settings. The amount of work that the startup’s approach can save for administrators grows even further when taking into account all the specialty components that a traditional database requires to handle chores like making backups.

The fact that Crate instances come in only one variety also makes it easier to scale the system as the containerized application that it’s supporting expands in size. When the system runs out of capacity, an administrator is able to spin up additional nodes without having to first calculate much more infrastructure needs to be allocated to performing data protection or orchestration. Dealing with technical issues is equally straightforward since the work assigned to a malfunctioning node can be easily redistributed among the rest of the cluster.

Crate Technology claims that the robust design of its database makes it possible to support even the biggest container implementations. A single instance is able to ingest tens of thousands of new records per second while executing queries in the background, which adds up to a lot of processing power across an entire deployment. Organizations could utilize the system to handle everything from standard relational data like customer contact information to telemetry measurements from mobile devices and other specialized information, according to the startup.

Skyhigh Networks Inc., a fellow venture-backed outfit that sells cloud-based security services, already uses Crate to process activity information from its corporate clients’ infrastructure. The new funding should help the database maker add more production customers and increase awareness of its platform in the developer ecosystem.

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