Set up Spanner Omni

Preview

This product or feature is a preview offering subject to the "Pre-GA Offerings Terms" in the General Service Terms section of the Service Specific Terms, and can only be used for the purposes of developing, testing, prototyping, and demonstrating software programs. It cannot be used for any data processing or commercial purposes. Pre-GA products and features are available "as is" and might have limited support. For more information, see the launch stage descriptions.

This page describes how to start Spanner Omni in single-server mode. You can either install it using a TAR file or run it as a container using Docker.

Before you begin

Before you set up your Spanner Omni instance, ensure you meet the following requirements:

• Verify your machine meets the system requirements.

• Ensure you have sudo access in your environment to set up the Spanner Omni binary.

• Ensure Docker is installed on your machine for container-based installations.

Run using Docker

We recommend storing Spanner data in a Docker volume to ensure data persistence if you delete the container.

1. Create a Docker volume:

   docker volume create spanner
   

2. Start the Spanner Omni server container. Replace VERSION_TAG with the Spanner Omni version you want to use. The current version is 2026.r1-beta.

   docker run -d --network host \
       --name spanneromni \
       -v "spanner:/spanner" \
       us-docker.pkg.dev/spanner-omni/images/spanner-omni:VERSION_TAG \
       start-single-server
   

   The --network host flag maps the Spanner Omni ports to the host machine.

3. Verify that the container is running:

   docker ps
   

   Check the STATUS field in the output to ensure the container is healthy.

Interact with the containerized server

You can use docker exec to run Spanner Omni CLI commands inside the container:

1. Create a database:

   docker exec -it spanneromni /google/spanner/bin/spanner databases create DATABASE_NAME
   

2. Open the SQL shell:

   docker exec -it spanneromni /google/spanner/bin/spanner sql --database=DATABASE_NAME
   

3. List databases:

   docker exec -it spanneromni /google/spanner/bin/spanner databases list