After more than quadrupling storage shipments over the past year, Qumulo Inc. is marking another milestone in its efforts to disrupt traditional array makers.

The company today announced that it has secured a $30 million funding round led by China’s Northern Light Venture Capital and several unnamed “strategic investors.” Four of the funds that contributed to Qumulo’s previous $32.5 million round last June participated as well, bumping its total raised past the $130 million mark.

The reason why the startup has managed to attract so much funding is its novel spin on network-attached storage. Qumulo sells a Linux-based data management platform with built-in analytics designed to help administrators gain a thorough understanding of their infrastructure. Dubbed Qumulo Core, it focuses mainly on highlighting areas where operational efficiency could be improved.

The software provides the ability to break down how much storage capacity workloads consume, measure the impact of their data activity and pinpoint processes that are overburdening the underlying infrastructure. If a more in-depth view is required, administrators can individually examine file operations to find cases where information is added or removed without a valid reason. This feature lends itself to identifying redundant data, a major pain point in many storage environments.

Qumulo offers companies two ways of deploying its software. They can order appliances that have the platform pre-installed, or buy a standalone license and set it up on third-party infrastructure. Qumulo Core works not only with on-premises storage equipment but also cloud deployments, which puts the startup in a position to address the growing amount of enterprise data that is kept outside the corporate firewall.

Today’s funding will help speed up its strategic roadmap. Qumulo plans to spend the capital on expanding its presence across the U.S., Europe and Asia, an effort that will likely place a strong emphasis on China given Northern Light’s central role in the round.

Image: Qumulo