Investors have poured $24 million into Pivot3, a RAID storage vendor that specializes in storing video surveillance data. 

Pivot3 this week announced the $24 million round of funding led by Mesirow Financial Capital Partners IX, with more funding coming from Silver Creek Ventures, Lightspeed Venture Partners and InterWest Partners.

"We look for companies that can have a high impact in a growing market," Daniel Howell, senior managing director at Mesirow Financial, said in a press release. "Pivot3 has established impressive customer momentum since its launch in mid-2007."

Pivot3 makes the RAIGE (RAID Across Gigabit Ethernet) Storage Cluster, which consists of storage nodes connected using Gigabit Ethernet and running over iSCSI. 

Pivot3 says RAIGE, which costs $17,500 per node, is ideal for video surveillance and other data-intensive applications. "Early clustered storage implementations have focused on file-level support," says Bill Galloway, Pivot3 co-founder and CTO. "Maximum performance and cost leverage, however, can only come from virtualization at the block level." (Learn more about storage virtualization products from our storage virtualization Buyer's Guide.)

Pivot3 was founded in 2003 and had already secured $22 million in funding from LightSpeed Venture and Interwest Partners when it launched publicly last June. This week's announcement ups the total to $46 million.

Pivot3 says it will use the new funds to position its block-level virtualization technology into new markets in addition to the gaming, law enforcement and government markets it has already penetrated.