When you create an operational database, you can now define the structure of your database based on a predefined Data Lake template. The template defines the number of gateway, master, and worker nodes to be added while creating a database.
You can select a template and accordingly the nodes are added into the COD cluster after the database is successfully created.
To know more about this, see Creating a database using COD.
This is available starting in COD v1.27 and you do not need to upgrade to a higher version of COD to benefit from this feature.
Try out CDP Operational Database for free with Test Drive (no cloud account or setup is needed).