Nexenta Systems, the self-proclaimed leader in software-defined storage with a decent enough following to support its claim, has raised another $24 million in D series financing, making its total haul from venture capital $59 million.

The new investment was led by new investor Four Rivers Group and included existing investors Menlo Ventures, Translink Capital, Javelin Ventures, Sierra Ventures, Razor's Edge and West Summit Capital.

New strategic investors Presidio Ventures, an arm of Sumitomo Corporation, and UMC Capital, a direct investment arm of Taiwan-based semiconductor foundry UMC, also participated.

They give Nexenta an "in" in Japan and China respectively except that Nexenta is supposed to be doing swimmingly in China already.

Provocatively there are supposed to be secret strategic IT infrastructure investors that don't want their names mentioned.

Although the round was oversubscribed, which could mean a mezzanine round at some point, Nexenta expects the new infusion to take it close to breakeven and near to an IPO.

While it was about it, the start-up has also realigned its management bringing in Mark Lockareff as CEO to replace former CEO Evan Powell, who is now chief strategy officer.

The idea is to expand Nexenta's reach in the enterprise and service provider markets, something Lockareff is supposed to be good at and has more of an appetite for than Powell. He needs to monetize Nexanta's freemium model. The company has recently hired 20 sales reps, who will sell the widgetry for somewhere between $3,000 and $50,000 a pop.

The company has also named Bridget Warwick chief marketing officer. She comes from Blue Arc and before that NetApp and is supposed to expand the company's brand and awareness among global enterprises and service providers.

Nexenta has 5,000 paying customers, at least 620PB under management, hum, lemme see, that's something like 1.5 exabytes - including Korea Telecom's 100PB - and subsidiaries in Holland, the UK, Germany, China, South Korea and Japan, with active partners expending its reach by roughly 475%.

Its revenues have reportedly nearly doubled year-over-year and the company says it's seen triple digit growth for three consecutive years, making it probably the fastest growing enterprise storage company in the world.