One system for every database workload

Cockroach Continuum is a database built for the agentic era. It separates compute from storage, lets databases share capacity, and includes an agentic operating assistant.

Independent layers by design.Coordinated by default.

Clients connect through a control plane that routes and isolates workloads. Beneath it, the CockroachDB engine for transactions, elastic storage for data, and agents for provisioning.

Client

Meet the estate through the interfaces your teams and systems already use.

  • Agents connect through APIs, MCP, and CLI tooling at machine speed.
  • Applications connect through PostgreSQL wire protocol and SQL.
  • Terraform and infrastructure workflows can sit alongside existing connections.

Control plane

One coordinated layer for provisioning, routing, policy, and metering.

  • Coordinates the estate without asking teams to manage every database as a separate island.
  • Enforces identity, policy, and metering across isolated virtual clusters.
  • Supports programmatic workflows alongside application and SQL connections.

Cockroach Aegis

Observes the estate, diagnoses issues, and recommends next steps.

  • Connects signals across the estate into a traceable reasoning chain.
  • Surfaces recommendations for workload consolidation, tuning, right-sizing, and index changes.
  • Read-only at launch: Aegis does not change configuration, schema, indexes, or data.

Database Virtualization

Isolated virtual clusters share coordinated host capacity.

  • Dedicated-metal or high-memory host capacity can be shared without sharing tenants.
  • Virtual clusters are isolated by quota, RBAC policy, and network namespace.
  • Fractional vCPU allocation lets workloads size to actual demand.
  • A cluster can go from a fraction of a vCPU to the size of the physical cluster — orders of magnitude — without moving to another host.

CockroachDB

The distributed SQL foundation underneath the Continuum estate.

  • Stays correct and available through failures that take other systems down.
  • Serializable isolation keeps transactional correctness in the foundation.
  • Scales horizontally and speaks PostgreSQL, so teams keep the tools and skills they already have.

Cockroach Plenum

Compute and storage adjust independently as demand changes.

  • Storage is shared across the estate, avoiding per-database disk reservations.
  • Storage follows bytes held rather than peak capacity reservation.
  • Compute can scale down when workloads are inactive and scale up as demand returns.

Response

The answer returns through the same coordinated path.

  • Results travel back through the virtual cluster and the control plane to the caller.
  • The vCPU the cluster borrowed to serve the request is released as the answer leaves.
  • Every layer it crossed reported identity, policy, and usage on the way through.
  • Aegis keeps watching the completed path and recommends what to change next.
01Clients
02Control
03Aegis
04Virtualization
05CockroachDB
06Plenum
07Response

Reading the diagram. In the virtualization stratum each square is one virtual cluster and its area is its allocated vCPU, sorted largest to smallest, with idle clusters collapsed to dots. Every tenant is on its own scaling trip — its own period, amplitude, and ramp — so at any moment roughly half the field is climbing and half is releasing. The scale is absolute and constant: a box of a given size is the same allocation wherever and whenever it appears, which is why the field itself fills and empties. The green square is the one we follow, from a dot in the idle row up to ten vCPU and back. The distribution and the scale-up shown are illustrative of fractional vCPU allocation, not a published configuration.

A fluid system at every layer.

Continuum brings the estate together without asking teams to give up speed, control, or the foundation already trusted in production.

Capacity that follows demand
Elastic compute and decoupled storage let the estate grow when demand arrives and release capacity when it passes.
Agent-assisted, human-governed
Aegis observes the estate, connects the diagnostic chain, and recommends next steps. It is read-only at launch, so humans approve every change.
Trusted foundation
Continuum is a new product, built on CockroachDB. The trusted distributed SQL that stays correct and available through outages, and speaks PostgreSQL.
The deepest layer stays dependable.
The deepest layer stays dependable.

Continuum is a new product, built on the CockroachDB engine: distributed SQL that stays correct and available through failures that take other systems down.

CockroachDB continues. Continuum is where it goes next.

The estate gets a coordinated operating model, elastic infrastructure, and agent-assisted visibility. The guarantees underneath stay familiar.

FAQ
Common questions about our architecture.
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