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Orchestrator User Guide

DELIVERY:

Automation Cloud Automation Cloud Public Sector Automation Suite Standalone

Last updated Nov 4, 2024

Setup in Orchestrator

Now that your cloud service provider is set up, you can proceed to connect Orchestrator to it and set up the elastic robots.

Configuring the Cloud Provider Connection

In Orchestrator:

Go to Tenant > Settings.
On the tenant's Settings page, select the Cloud Connections tab.
Click the Add Cloud Provider Subscription icon and select your provider:
Type a name for the connection on the left.
Add the cloud connection details applicable for the selected cloud provider, as specified above in the Requirements section:
Click Save.

Your provider validates the information and then connects your Orchestrator.

Creating an Elastic Robot Pool

To connect elastic robots to Orchestrator in the cloud, you need to provision a machine template of the type Elastic robot pool. This machine template is used when UiPath manages the robots and they run in your cloud.

When creating the elastic robot pool, you have two options:

You can allow us to automatically create machines when they're needed based on your generalized cloud VM. This automates the provisioning process for both machines and robots. Whenever a process needs to run, the required number of machines are created. In addition, when the elastic robot pool is first used, we install the required UiPath software to run the robot on the new machines.
(AWS or Azure only) You can add specific VMs that you want us to use for elastic robot orchestration. This is a limited version of elastic robot orchestration where we can start and stop the VM as needed to run processes and install the required UiPath software to run the robot, but we only use the specified machines. We cannot create new machines for you, nor can we remove machines that you created.

To create the elastic robot pool:

Select Tenant in the top left and then go to Machines.
Click Add machine in the top right of the page and select Elastic Robot Pool:

The Add Elastic Robot Pool page opens on the General Details tab.
Enter a name and, optionally, add a description for the elastic robot pool.
In the Runtime details section, enter the number of Production (Unattended), NonProduction, or Testing runtimes (robot licenses) needed for each machine that is created based on this template.

We recommend selecting 1 (one) runtime for Unattended and 0 (zero) for NonProduction and Testing.

If you are running Test Sets, set one (1) runtime for test execution slots.
Click Next to configure VM & runtime details.
On the right, under Profile Scheduling, select the default profile, which controls how you want us to prioritize machine allocation:
- Cost Efficient: minimize the CSP costs of running VMs at the expense of increased wait time for pending jobs needing to be scheduled
- Balanced: balance between CSP costs with running VMs and speeding up job scheduling
- Fast: minimize the scheduling wait time of pending jobs at the expense of increased costs with running VMs.
  
  Note: For each of the options above, we determine when it's time to allocate or deallocate a machine by considering several details, including the number of VMs that are running, the amount of time to wait for a machine to become available, the number of job items queued for a machine, and the cooldown time.
- Advanced: manually set parameters to control how quickly new machines are allocated when needed:
  
  Important: Using the Advanced profile can incur additional CSP costs since it can keep machines running longer, depending on the settings you use.
To configure an Advanced profile:
1. Select the Advanced option as the default profile. The advanced setup expands.
2. Configure the Allocation Speed, which determines how fast the machines are allocated to your pool.
3. In the Standby Machines field, enter the minimum number of machines to accept workloads.
4. In the Idle Machine Timeout, enter the number of minutes the machine can remain in an idle state, meaning it does not process any workloads and it is not used as a standby machine. After this time, the machine is shut down. Automatically created machines are removed from the pool.
In the Machine Details section, from the Cloud Connection list, select the cloud service provider connection you previously created in Orchestrator.

Important: Elastic Robot Orchestration works on standalone Azure VMs running Windows operating systems, such as Desktop and Server. However, it does not work on virtualized desktops, such as Azure Virtual Desktop (AVD) or Amazon WorkSpaces.
For Azure, select the Resource Group used for the connection.

For AWS, select the Region.

For GCP, select the Zone.
If you want us to use your VM template to automatically provision machines and robots on demand, keep the Automatically Create Machines toggle switched on.

To use your custom VMs, switch the toggle off.

Note:
For GCP, this option is not available.
If you have switched off Automatically Create Machines, in the Machine(s) field, select the VM template or the custom VM you created for elastic robot orchestration.
Under Machine image, select the machine image type:
- Standard if you want to use a standard VM.
- Customized if you want to use one of your existing customized machines.

If you selected Standard in Step 12, now select the machine operating system:

Windows Server machines, which use Windows Server 2019 as the operating system.
Windows Desktop machines, which use either Windows 10 or Windows 11 licenses.
Note:
Before creating the VMs and installing Windows OS on them, you are asked to confirm you possess eligible Windows 10/11 license(s) with multi-tenant hosting. Make sure you have as many Windows Desktop licenses as the number of VMs you want to create.

From the dropdown, select the machine image.

Select a machine size.

Size	vCPU	Memory (GiB)	Max data disks	Max uncached disk throughput (IOPS/MBps)	Max burst uncached disk throughput (IOPS/MBps)	Max NICs	Expected network bandwidth (Mbps)
Small	2	16	4	3200/48	4000/200	2	5,000
Medium	8	64	16	12800/192	16000/400	4	12,500
Large	16	128	32	25600/384	32000/800	8	12,500

If you selected Customized in Step 12, now select the VM template or the custom VMs you created for elastic robot orchestration, respectively.
- If you have switched off Automatically Create Machines, we only use the selected machines for elastic robot orchestration. When choosing this option, make sure that the machines you select are not used in any other elastic robot pool. In addition, for VMs hosted in AWS, the AWS EC2 Instance must have the AmazonSSMManagedInstanceCore instance profile attached. For instructions, see the AWS documentation.
- If Automatically Create Machines is switched on, we use the selected template to create the required number of machines when needed.
Note: Adding a machine template for Azure images may take up to 15 minutes.
1. (For Azure machines) From the Machine series dropdown, select the desired series for your Azure machine.
2. From the Machine size dropdown, select the size for your machine.
Under Public IP Address, select Enabled if you want the machine IP address to be public.

Important:
Only for Azure connections, you can make the IP public.
For Maximum no. of Machines, select one of the following options:
- Use the max available: when you want to allow the pool to scale up to the maximum available licenses for the tenant. Your cloud provider subscription plan may limit the maximum value.
- Specify a limit: if you want to limit the maximum number of machines, select this option and type in the maximum number of machines we can create.
Click Advanced Settings to show additional options:
1. From the Virtual Network list, you can select Automatic to allow your machine template to provision its own virtual network, or select the virtual network used for your cloud provider to use that virtual network and Subnet, if defined.
Click Next for Pool configurations.

(Optional) To set a delayed update of UiPath software on your machines, switch on the Software update settings toggle. The following options are displayed:

Option	Description
Instant auto-update (recommended)	This is the default and recommended option. UiPath software on your machines, such as UiPath Robot, Studio, or Assistant, is updated to the latest Enterprise version within two weeks. The update applies to all machines in the pool.
Delayed auto-update	Select this option to update UiPath software on your machines to the version preceding the latest one. A delayed auto-update depends on the software version present at the time of adding a machine in the pool. For example, if a machine was added when version 2023.4 was latest, the delayed auto-update installs the 2022.10 software version. After 2023.10 is released, the delayed auto-update installs the 2023.4 sofware version. The update applies to all machines in the pool. Note: This option is designed to create a buffer period for adjusting your automations before transitioning to the latest Enterprise version. It does not update UiPath software to the latest version, but to the one preceding it.

Option

Description

Instant auto-update (recommended)

This is the default and recommended option. UiPath software on your machines, such as UiPath Robot, Studio, or Assistant, is updated to the latest Enterprise version within two weeks.

The update applies to all machines in the pool.

Delayed auto-update

Select this option to update UiPath software on your machines to the version preceding the latest one.

A delayed auto-update depends on the software version present at the time of adding a machine in the pool. For example, if a machine was added when version 2023.4 was latest, the delayed auto-update installs the 2022.10 software version. After 2023.10 is released, the delayed auto-update installs the 2023.4 sofware version.

The update applies to all machines in the pool.

Note:

This option is designed to create a buffer period for adjusting your automations before transitioning to the latest Enterprise version. It does not update UiPath software to the latest version, but to the one preceding it.

Important:

The Delayed auto-update option does not downgrade Robot versions newer than the suggested one.

Warning:

Versions with security fixes are automatically installed, regardless of the chosen software update option.

Click Finish.

Your elastic robot pool is now set up and ready to be used in a modern folder to run jobs.

Important:

Do not interfere with the cloud resources (VMs, images) once you add them to an elastic robot pool.

For example:

do not power cycle the VM manually,
do not delete the VM from the CSP while it is still in the pool, or
do not connect or disconnect the Robot to/from Orchestrator.

Configuring Folder and Account Roles

You need to add the elastic robot pool to a folder and grant automation permissions for the folder to the account that uses the virtual machine.

Select a folder on the left and go to Settings> Machines.
In the top right of the page, click Manage Machines in Folder.
Select the elastic robot pool and click Update.
Switch to the Manage Access page to see the available accounts.
If the account you want to be running the automations, which should be the local user of the virtual machine, is not listed, add it and give it the Robot role.

Note: We recommend using a robot account, which is a type of account dedicated for running unattended automations.
At the right of the account row, click the More Actions icon and select Edit. Make the following changes:
1. For Robot Setup > Attended Robot, switch the toggle off. (Not applicable for robot accounts.)
2. For Robot Setup > Unattended Robot, switch the toggle on. (Already enabled for robot accounts.)
3. Select the Run foreground automations (Credentials required) checkbox. In the Domain\Username field, type .\username (for example, .\uirobot). In the Passwordfield, type the account password.
4. For Robot Settings, switch the toggle on for Login to console and select No to prevent the robot from timing out.

Your folder is now set up and the account is configured.

Note: As opposed to regular machine templates, adding an elastic robot pool to a folder does not also add it to its sub-folders. If you want to use the machine in a sub-folder as well, you must perform the above steps for the sub-folder.

Now that setup in Orchestrator is also complete, you can start running automations in the cloud.

Test Running an Automation in the Cloud

Test the elastic robot orchestration setup by running your first automation in the cloud.

Creating the first virtual machine can take some time - from 10 minutes to several hours (observed only in Azure). A virtual machine must be available to run a job before you can test-run an automation.

Note:

The machines of the Elastic Robot Pool show up in the Machine dropdown when you create an automation. The runtime is the one set at Elastic Robot Pool creation.

In Orchestrator: