Run AlloyDB anywhere - in your data center, your laptop, or in any cloud

Migrating off expensive, legacy databases, wherever they may be, remains a top priority for enterprises. Last year, we announced the general availability of AlloyDB, a fully-managed, PostgreSQL-compatible database service that provides a powerful option for modernizing your most demanding enterprise database workloads and for existing PostgreSQL users looking to scale with no application changes. Not only have customers given us great feedback on the performance and scalability of AlloyDB, they’ve also shown a surge of interest in migrating completely off expensive, legacy databases that have unfriendly licensing practices. Customers have asked us to help them accelerate their legacy database modernization by bringing a fully supported AlloyDB edition to wherever their workloads run, whether on-premises, at the edge, or in other clouds.

Today, we’re excited to announce the technology preview of AlloyDB Omni, a downloadable edition of AlloyDB designed to run on premises, at the edge, across clouds, or even on developer laptops. AlloyDB Omni offers the AlloyDB benefits you’ve come to love, including high performance, PostgreSQL-compatibility, and Google Cloud support, all at a fraction of the cost of legacy databases.

AlloyDB Omni is powered by the same engine that underlies the cloud-based AlloyDB service, which you can use to modernize your legacy databases in place, as part of your journey to the cloud. In our performance tests, AlloyDB Omni is more than 2x faster than standard PostgreSQL for transactional workloads, and delivers up to 100x faster analytical queries than standard PostgreSQL. Download the free developer edition today at https://cloud.google.com/alloydb/omni.

Modernize your legacy databases

Like many enterprises, your organization probably wants to get off legacy databases to eliminate unfriendly licensing relationships, expensive fees, and vendor lock-in. However, you can’t always move as fast as you want because your workloads may be restricted to on-premises data centers to meet regulatory or data sovereignty requirements, or you may be running applications at the edge, such as at a retail store.

As a stepping stone to the cloud, customers have asked us for a path to support in-place modernization with a database that not only exceeds the performance and manageability of legacy databases, but also includes the full enterprise support of Google Cloud.

So we decided to do something unusual for a cloud provider: we took some of the best of AlloyDB and the best of our high-end enterprise support capability, and delivered a high-performance, downloadable version that you can leverage for in-place database modernization as part of your cloud journey, all at a fraction of the cost of legacy databases. AlloyDB Omni also runs in Google Distributed Cloud Hosted for isolated environment requirements as part of our expanding catalog of services.

“Multicloud, hybrid cloud, and edge computing are here to stay,” said Carl Olofson, Research Vice President, Data Management Software, IDC. “While the cloud is often the final destination, many organizations have workloads that can’t be immediately moved, creating the need for a downloadable, cross-platform database to run enterprise applications. AlloyDB Omni is a great move for Google Cloud because it meets customers where they are rather than requiring them to change platforms. A PostgreSQL-compatible database with accelerated performance, an integrated analytics engine, and ML-driven management fills a critical need in the database market, and AlloyDB Omni is a compelling option for organizations looking for a proven database that’s supported by a major vendor and offers cloud and non-cloud deployment options.”

The best of AlloyDB, wherever you are

AlloyDB Omni includes many of the core database engine innovations of the fully-managed AlloyDB service including improved transactional performance compared to standard PostgreSQL, accelerated analytical processing, automatic vacuum and memory management, and an index advisor that helps optimize frequently run queries.

The AlloyDB Omni index advisor helps alleviate the guesswork of tuning query performance by conducting a deep analysis of the different parts of a query including subqueries, joins, and filters. It periodically analyzes the database workload, identifies queries that can benefit from indexes, and recommends new indexes that can increase query performance.

AlloyDB Omni also includes the AlloyDB columnar engine, which keeps frequently queried data in an in-memory columnar format for faster scans, joins, and aggregations. AlloyDB Omni uses machine learning to automatically organize your data between row-based and columnar formats, convert the data when needed, and choose between columnar and row-based execution plans. This delivers excellent performance for a wide range of queries, with minimal management overhead.

“At CME Group, we have extremely high transaction throughput and operational requirements from our customers, combined with stringent uptime and availability demands,” says Sunil Cutinho, Chief Information Officer at CME Group, the world's leading derivatives exchange, where clients trade futures and options across every investable asset class. “AlloyDB gives us the performance and scalability we need, and AlloyDB Omni enables us to begin modernizing and migrating to Google Cloud, while maintaining our customer commitments and supporting our most mission critical traditional legacy workloads.”

Use the tools and skills you already have

To get you started, AlloyDB Omni offers a free developer edition for non-production use, which can be easily installed on developer laptops. When it’s time to move an application to a production-ready environment, it will run unchanged on AlloyDB Omni in any environment, or on the AlloyDB for PostgreSQL service in Google Cloud. If needed, you can use standard open source PostgreSQL tools to migrate or replicate your data. You can also use standard open source PostgreSQL tools for database operations like backup and replication.

Because AlloyDB Omni uses standard PostgreSQL drivers, existing PostgreSQL applications are immediately AlloyDB Omni-compatible. In addition, AlloyDB Omni provides full compatibility with PostgreSQL extensions and configuration flags, allowing you to leverage the full PostgreSQL ecosystem.

To give you peace of mind, when AlloyDB Omni is made generally available (GA), Google Cloud will offer full enterprise support, including 24/7 technical support and software updates for security patches and features. 

How to get started

Are you ready to try AlloyDB Omni? You can read more about it in the documentation, and you can complete this signup form to get access to the technology preview. As part of the download process, you will also accept the Terms of Service. Note that AlloyDB Omni is not yet suitable for production use. We look forward to your feedback!