Metapa Nets $8M Series C

Data center software startup Metapa has secured $8 million in series C funding, and it's using the funds to draft some new blood as it gets ready to attack the data warehouse market.

The funding round was led by Mission Ventures, EDF Ventures, and Dawntreader Ventures Group Inc., bringing the companys total funding to $28 million.

So, what does Metapa do? The Sherman Oaks, Calif.-based firm develops database software for data warehousing. Its core offering is Cluster DataBase (CDB), which supports the Linux, Solaris, and Unix operating systems.

Increasingly, companies are deploying clusters of low-cost servers from vendors such as Dell Computer Corp. (Nasdaq: DELL), IBM Corp. (NYSE: IBM), and Sun Microsystems Inc. (Nasdaq: SUNW) in an attempt to boost their processing power (see Statoil Builds Dell Cluster and Clusters Make a Stand).

CDB works by splitting the databases up so that different parts run on separate nodes within a cluster. This means that queries and sub-queries of the data can run in parallel, providing much faster access to the information, according to Metapa execs.