Clustrix is a startup that ‘NewSQL’ databases – its distributed DB software runs in a self-contained and pre-configured  box’s that can easily be added to an existing deployment, and don’t require any out of the ordinary in-house talent to maintain.

Clustrix received $6.75 million from investors Sequoia Capital, USVP, and ATA Ventures. It raised $12 million prior to that.

Robin Purohit, who took over as president and CEO of the company last October, notes that it’s a round of convertible debt being used as a bridge to an upcoming Series C round.

Clusterix has had a good swing with the early adopter market, and is looking to ramp up  customer acquisition.  The funding should help with that, enabling an aggressive build out of the Clustrix sales force.

The database appliance vendor only has about 60 staff members right now, but that’s still 50 percent more than the worker counter before Purohit jumped aboard.

The San Francisco-based company was founded in 2005 and raised nearly $20 million in venture capital to date, including this week’s funding round. It was also a Y Combinator startup at one point, just like MemSQL.

MemSQL went out of stealth last month with $5 million from Paul Buchheit, Max Levchin, Aaron Levie and Ashton Kutcher.  And just like Clustrix it’s also offering a database solution, though minus the hardware. Its platform converts SQL to a much faster low level language within an in-memory data tier, and as a result can speed things up considerably in certain environments.

Big data is a catchphrase that’s being approached from several different angles. MemSQL is focusing on software performance while Clustrix is offering a more efficient way of handling large datasets, and both of them managed to attract VCs’ – and customers’ – attention.