Test Drive

Nutanix Database Service Launches on Google Cloud Platform

July 28, 2026 10:30 am |
min

We’re thrilled to announce the availability of Nutanx Database Service (NDB) on the Google Cloud Platform (GCP). NDB is now available in the marketplaces of all three major public cloud platforms, namely, AWS, Azure and GCP.  This opens up a whole new world of possibilities for your database deployments across your cloud of choice.  With NDB on Nutanix Cloud Clusters (NC2) in GCP, you can now deploy and manage your SQL, NoSQL and Vector databases on Google Cloud Bare Metal instances to support your enterprise mission critical, cloud native and AI workloads with ease.  NDB supports both single instance and high-availability database deployments. These capabilities can be applied using a consistent interface across your entire database estate, be it on-premises or in any of the supported public clouds. With NDB, customers get true database portability, where they can move on-premises databases to the public cloud or vice versa by using the exact same API. Thus avoiding the need to reprogram or replatform their database environments.

NDB on NC2 in GCP supports the most popular commercial and open source databases, which include PostgreSQL, EDB, MongoDB, Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server, MySQL, and MariaDB. All combinations of compatible operating systems and database engines are equally supported across all three clouds and on-premises.

Running NDB on Google Cloud bare metal gives you full control of your database environment and the ability to run the database engines and supported versions of your choice, with all the advantages of a hybrid multicloud database automation platform and more, including:

  • Unified database management: Manage the entire database lifecycle from provisioning, scaling, backup and recovery to patching and cloning for diverse database engines such as Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle Database, PostgreSQL, EDB, MongoDB, and MySQL as well as provisioning and cloning for MariaDB – all with a unified control plane.
graphic to represent Screenshot from Google Cloud Console running NC2 VMs with NDB control plane hosted in Europe-west region as an example. Customers can deploy the NDB control plane on any supported GCP region globally

Figure 1: Screenshot from Google Cloud Console running NC2 VMs with NDB control plane hosted in Europe-west region as an example. Customers can deploy the NDB control plane on any supported GCP region globally.

  • Centralized control and visibility: Effortlessly manage thousands of databases across on-premises, multiple public clouds, colocation facilities, service providers, and edge locations through unified simple interfaces of your choice, GUI, CLI, API or even K8s operators.
  • Simplified self-service provisioning: Empower developers with self-service provisioning for fast and easy access to a wide range of database engines, including PostgreSQL, EDB, MongoDB, MySQL, SQL Server, Oracle, and MariaDB. Supports seamless API integration with popular infrastructure management and development tools like Kubernetes®, Ansible, and Terraform bringing down provisioning time to minutes from days.
  • Enhanced security and compliance: Rapidly deploy security policies across your entire database estate or to specific databases. Utilize consistent security policies across your on-premises and public cloud deployments and implement role-based access controls to support compliance with data security and privacy regulations.
  • Space-efficient database cloning: NDB supports quick clone and refresh operations to a specific point in time using transactional logs or snapshots. Nutanix snapshots create highly space-efficient clones that initially consume nearly zero bytes, reducing the cost of managing multiple database copies.
  • Resilient infrastructure: Leverage the Nutanix self-healing infrastructure, which provides automatic recovery from common failures without user intervention, or apply software patches for security or bug fixes with minimal service disruptions to support continuous database availability.
  • Database Portability across On-premises and GCP NC2 on Google Cloud allows you to run native Nutanix environments on GCP bare metal. This enables live migrations of database VMs between your on-premises cluster and GCP with zero application refactoring.
  • Fast Backup & Recovery NDB can enable drastic reduction in Recovery Time Objectives (RTO) with rapid point-in-time recovery. In internal enterprise-scale benchmark testing with a 40 TB, three-node high-availability cluster, a full database restore was completed in roughly 22 minutes, allowing for minimal operational downtime.
  • Database Patching NDB can drastically reduce the time required for patching of HA clusters.  Manually patching HA clusters is complex because it requires sequencing updates across multiple nodes without breaking quorum or introducing failover risk. NDB automates this workflow, reducing operational risk and eliminating manual coordination. NDB also supports bulk patching for large environments that often require patching dozens of instances quickly.

How to get Started with NDB on GCP

Getting started with Nutanix Database Service (NDB) on Google Cloud Platform (GCP) involves running NDB on top of Nutanix Cloud Clusters (NC2) deployed on Google Compute Engine bare-metal nodes (such as the storage-optimized Z3 or high-performance C4 families).

Here is the step-by-step workflow to deploy and configure NDB in a GCP environment:

Step 1: Deploy the NC2 Infrastructure on GCP

  1. Provision the Bare-Metal Cluster:
    • Use the NC2 Console to deploy a Nutanix cluster onto GCP bare-metal instances directly inside your designated GCP project and Virtual Private Cloud (VPC).
  2. Configure Flow Virtual Networking (FVN):
    • Set up overlay networks and subnets in Prism Central. These subnets will handle traffic for database server VMs, NDB management, and application connections.
  3. Verify Prism Central:
    • Ensure Prism Central is active and managing the NC2 cluster.

Step 2: Deploy the NDB Control Plane

  1. Deploy the NDB Appliance:
    • Download the NDB software package/image from the Nutanix Portal and deploy the NDB Control Plane virtual machine (VM) onto your NC2 cluster via Prism Central.
  2. Perform Initial Appliance Setup:
    • Assign a static IP address to the NDB Control Plane VM.
    • Access the NDB web interface, set administrator credentials, and install required SSL certificates.

Step 3: Register the NC2 Cluster & Network Profiles

  1. Register Cluster with NDB:
    • Log into NDB, navigate to Administration > Nutanix Clusters, and register your GCP-hosted NC2 cluster using its Prism Element credentials.
  2. Create Network Profiles:
    • Map the FVN overlay subnets into NDB Network Profiles.
    • Configure IP pools so NDB can automatically assign IP addresses to newly provisioned database VMs.

Step 4: Apply NDB Licensing

Select and configure your preferred licensing model in the NDB console:

  • Per Cluster: License all physical cores of the GCP bare-metal host nodes to allow unlimited database VMs on that cluster.
  • Per VM: License target vCPUs for specific database server VMs (requires NCI to be licensed separately).

Step 5: Provision or Register Databases

  1. Prepare OS Templates:
    • Upload database template images (Linux or Windows) configured with the prerequisite packages for your target database engines (e.g., PostgreSQL, Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle, MySQL, or MongoDB).
  2. Deploy or Import:
    • Provision New: Use NDB’s 1-Click Provisioning to launch database instances built according to Nutanix best practices.
    • Register Existing: Import existing database VMs into NDB to enable automated patching, copy data management (CDM), and Time Machine continuous backups.

For more information on the latest NDB release, read NDB 2.11 Blog Post. Ready to experience the power of NDB for yourself? Learn more about NDB and dive into the details today:

NDB on Google Cloud demo video