Today, December 5, 2025, Google announced support for Private Clouds with mixed node families. This is a feature I’ve requested multiple times, and it’s finally here.

The Restriction

While you can now have ve1-standard and ve2-standard nodes in the same Private Cloud, there is a catch: each Cluster must contain nodes of the same type.

• Cluster A: 3x ve1 nodes (Dev/Test)
• Cluster B: 4x ve2 nodes (Production DBs)
• Private Cloud: Manages both.

Why is this cool?

Previously, you effectively needed separate Private Clouds (and thus separate vCenters/NSX Managers) if you wanted different hardware tiers. Now, you can manage your “legacy” ve1 hardware and your shiny new ve2 hardware under a single vCenter pane of glass.

Summary

This simplifies management massively. You can perform lifecycle management (upgrading from ve1 to ve2) by adding a new cluster and vMotioning workloads over, all within the same SDDC.