diff --git a/lib/nova b/lib/nova
index e07e61c2ca..d5cefc9297 100644
--- a/lib/nova
+++ b/lib/nova
@@ -421,7 +421,7 @@ function init_nova() {
     # All nova components talk to a central database.  We will need to do this step
     # only once for an entire cluster.
 
-    if is_service_enabled $DATABASE_BACKENDS && is_service_enabled nova; then
+    if is_service_enabled $DATABASE_BACKENDS && is_service_enabled n-api; then
         # (Re)create nova database
         # Explicitly use latin1: to avoid lp#829209, nova expects the database to
         # use latin1 by default, and then upgrades the database to utf8 (see the