Portworx, a fledgling startup based in Redwood City, California, has revealed for the first time its container storage product, a software tool that allows Docker containers to run directly on storage infrastructure.

Called PWX, the appliance targets enterprise production environments running Dockerized applications with whopping database access needs. It’s sold as software that runs on commodity x86 servers, with an eye toward the generic hardware approach of the Software Defined Data Center.

A cloud version runs on Amazon’s EC2 cloud service. Pricing will be on an annual subscription basis for either version.

“It’s very problematic to manage containers in production,” says Portworx co-founder Goutham Rao. “Infrastructure in the data center is just not aware of the containers.”

Portworx claims to solve that problem with its resource-based scheduling tool. Rao likens the approach to VMware‘s vSan storage solution for virtual machines, except optimized for the lighter, faster container approach that is supplanting VMs.

Founded just last November by Rao and Murli Thirumale, now CEO, Portworx has raised at least $8.5 million in a Series A funding round led by VC firm Mayfield. The serial entrepreneur duo previously founded Net6 (acquired by Citrix) and Ocarina Networks (acquired by Dell).

Now the pair hope to ride the rising tide of Docker mania. “Docker adoption is still in its infancy…there’s some education that needs to happen,” says Gou. “That’s an opportunity for us, but also a challenge.”