- Getting started
- Best practices
- Tenant
- About the Tenant Context
- Searching for Resources in a Tenant
- Managing Robots
- Connecting Robots to Orchestrator
- Storing Robot Credentials in CyberArk
- Storing Unattended Robot Passwords in Azure Key Vault (read-only)
- Storing Unattended Robot Credentials in HashiCorp Vault (read-only)
- Storing Unattended Robot Credentials in AWS Secrets Manager (read Only)
- Deleting Disconnected and Unresponsive Unattended Sessions
- Robot Authentication
- Robot Authentication With Client Credentials
- Audit
- Settings
- Cloud robots
- Elastic Robot Orchestration
- Automation Cloud™ Robots - VM
- Automation Cloud™ Robots - Serverless
- Configuring VPN for Cloud Robots
- Folders Context
- Automations
- Processes
- Jobs
- Apps
- Triggers
- Logs
- Monitoring
- Queues
- Assets
- Storage Buckets
- Test Suite - Orchestrator
- Resource Catalog Service
- Authentication
- Integrations
- Troubleshooting
Automation Cloud™ Robots - VM
UiPath Automation Cloud™ robots - VM, or cloud robots - VM for short, make it easy to set up the necessary infrastructure to run automations.
We handle all the work behind the scenes and give you a virtual machine on which to run automations. The only thing you have to do is configure the virtual machine and run jobs.
hvagent or UiPath VM Agent), which ensures the running of VMs. You can find it in your CSP installation folder. Add this agent to your allow-list, so
that your security agents do not remove/block it.
Watch the video for a guided walkthrough from creating a new tenant in your UiPath organization and allocating robot units to it, to running a job on a Cloud Robot-VM.
You must create a new machine template of the type Cloud Robots - VM.
Machine templates allow you to configure properties that will apply to all Cloud Robots - VM machines created from it. Then, whenever you need machines, we create as many machines as needed that are exactly like the template.
- Under Machine image:
- 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.
-
- Select the machine operating system:
- Under IP Address, select if you want the machine to use a dynamic IP address, or use a static one.
By default, VMs use a dynamic IP address, meaning it acquires a different IP address every time it starts. To use the same IP address, change this setting to Static.
Note:Once the pool is created and VMs are added, you can see the private IP of a VM if you select the Private IP column from the Columns menu, on the VM grid.
- [Preview] To allow VMs in your pool to automatically join domains, check the Create as domain joined machine pool box.Note:
This option is available only at pool creation time and only if you enable the VPN integration.
Once the machine pool is created, you cannot edit the name of the domain the VMs in the pool join.
However, you can update the user credentials the VM pool uses to join the domain.
On the Machines page, a success message is displayed along the top and you can see your new template in the list.
VMs added in a domain-joined machine pool are automatically joined to the domain. Domain credentials are verified during the VM creation. Once joined, a success message is displayed along the top on the Machines page.
After you have configured the manually managed cloud robot pool, you can add machines to it.
- In the top right, click Add Virtual Machine.
The Add Virtual Machine page opens.
Note:If, at the bottom, the Cost is displayed in red font, this means there are insufficient robot units (RUs) available in the tenant and you cannot create a new machine.
If you are an organization administrator in Automation Cloud, you can click Add more robot units to the tenant balance to go to Admin > Tenants and allocate the needed RUs to this tenant.
Otherwise reach out to your organization administrator to request additional RUs.
If your option for the Machine image was a Windows Desktop - Standard image, now you are prompted to confirm you possess eligible Windows 10/11 licenses with multi-tenant hosting.
Back on the Manage Cloud Robot - VM page, a success message is displayed at the top of the page, and the machines appear in the list with the Provisioning status.
It may take a few minutes to complete provisioning. All machine options are unavailable until the machine is provisioned.
After provisioning is complete, the machine status changes to Running.
While the machine is running, you can connect to it through Windows Remote Desktop and customize its configuration.
- On the Manage Cloud Robot - VM page, check that the Machine Status column shows Running for the machine.
If the machine is stopped, select it, and then click the Start VMs button at the top of the VM grid. Wait a few minutes until the status changes to Running.
- (Optional) If the Accept Jobs column shows Enabled for the machine, select the machine, and then click the Disable Jobs button at the top of the VM grid. Wait a few moments for the status to change to Disabled.
We recommend doing this to prevent our auto-scaling engine from shutting down the machine while you are connected to it. This can happen if the machine becomes idle, even if your are connected to it.
- In the Remote Desktop column, click the info icon to see the IP address for the machine and copy it.
In this step, you can edit the IP address used to access the remote desktop. By inputting a different value than the existing one, you can access your remote desktop only from the newly saved IP address.
Note:The Access IP is the IPv4 address of the machines used to access the VM.
The Public IP is the IPv4 address of the VM machine.
Note:Orchestrator recognizes only IPv4 address types.If an IPv6 address type is detected, an error message is displayed, and a pop-up window prompts you to enter the corresponding IPv4 address. One way to find out what your what your IPv4 address is is to check it on this website. - Connect to the machine using Windows Remote Desktop as follows:
- use the machine's IP address
Note:If the Public IP address is null, the VM may be off. In this case, restart the VM and refresh the VM list.
- use the admin credentials you defined for the machine; if you do not remember the credentials, you can reset them.
- If you disabled jobs for the machine earlier, re-enable them on the Manage Cloud Robot - VM page by selecting the machine, and then clicking the Enable jobs button at the top of the VM grid.
If you want to use this customized machine for a machine template, you can create a customized image.
You can then use the customized image instead of a standard machine image, when:
-
creating new cloud robot pools
-
creating new cloud robot pools or new VMs in the same pool
You can update the VM image by editing the pool and changing the machine image option. The updated machine image applies only to newly provisioned VMs.
To be able to run automations with your new cloud robots, some setup is required in Orchestrator:
Step 4a. Accept Jobs on the Machine
A newly-provisioned machine in a manual pool is not set to accept jobs by default. After any configuration you want to perform is complete and the machine is ready for use, you must manually set it to accept jobs.
To allow a machine to be used for running jobs:
- Go to Tenant > Machines.
- At the right of the pool row, click More Actions and select Add or Manage VMs.
- On the Manage Cloud Robot - VM page, select the machine, and then click the Enable jobs button at the top of the VM grid.
A success message is displayed along the top and the Accept Jobs column shows Enabling.
After a few moments, when the status changes to Enabled, the machine can be used to run jobs in the folders where the pool is assigned.
-
When the Accept Jobs option is disabled, the auto-scaling engine takes control and can shut down or start machines automatically.
-
When the Accept Jobs option is enabled, the selected machine availability profile takes control.
Step 4b. Add the pool to folders
Add the Cloud Robots - VM machine template to folders which contain unattended automations that you want to run using cloud robots.
Step 4c. Use cloud robots to run jobs
Now you and your users can start to run unattended automations using cloud robots.
To run a job using cloud robots: Start a job as you normally would, but for the Runtime license select Cloud Robot - VM.
- Some fields which do not apply when the runtime is Cloud Robot - VM are not available or cannot be edited. Configure job execution using the available options.
- In the case of cloud robots, selecting the Keep Account/Machine allocation on job resumption checkbox means the job resumes on a machine that was created from the same template, not necessarily the exact same machine.
If your automations require certain applications, thus needing to be run on a specific customized VM, you must provide the Account and Machine where those applications are installed. Not making any selection determines the job to run on one of the available machines in the machine pool that is allocated to the folder.
If you already have a disk image in your cloud subscription, which has the required software for your automations, you can create a copy of that image and upload it in Orchestrator. Further, you can create cloud robot pools starting from your Windows image.
Currently, only images from Azure cloud subscriptions are supported.
.vhd or .vhdx).
Make sure that the virtual hard drive you want to upload is compatible with Azure Gen2 VMs. For more information on how to prepare your image for uploading, read the Azure documentation.
To upload the image from your cloud subscription:
- Navigate to Tenant > Settings > Cloud Robot Images. The list with the available custom images is displayed.
- Click Add custom image to open the uploading wizard.
- Provide the following details:
Option Description Image name * (mandatory)
The name for your custom image.
Description (optional)
The description for your custom image. For example, installed software or size.
Robot Service Username (mandatory)
This is the name of the robot account used to execute the workflows. The robot account must exist on the uploaded image.
Image file link * (mandatory)
The public URL where your image can be found.
The URL must be accessible by UiPath.
Image OS (mandatory)
The operating system on top of which the image is created in Orchestrator.
Once you upload your custom image to Orchestrator, it is ready to use:
New Cloud Robot Pools
Simply select the custom image you previously uploaded from the Image name * dropdown under the Customized image option (see step 8 in Creating the Cloud Robot Pool).
Existing Cloud Robot Pools
When you change the base image of an existing cloud robot pool to the image you previously uploaded, consider the following behaviors:
-
Manual pools - you may need to delete existing VMs and recreate them using the new base image.
-
Automatic pools - no new VMs are provisioned on the old base image, and the existing VMs should shut out.
If you have a machine that you have customized according to your automation needs and you want to reuse it, you can create an image of the customized machine. This creates a disk capture that is available to use in a new Cloud Robots - VM template as a customized machine.
Since VMs in automatic pools are automatically deleted, you cannot create custom images of these types of machines.
To create an image of a customized machine:
- Go to Tenant > Machines.
- At the right of the pool row, click More Actions and select Add or Manage VMs.
-
On the Manage Cloud Robot - VM page, check that the Machine Status column shows Stopped for the machine.
If the machine is running, select it, and then click the Stop VMs button at the top of the VM grid. Wait until the status changes to Stopped.
-
Check that the Accept Jobs column shows Disabled for the machine.
If enabled, select the machine, and then click the Disable Jobs button at the top of the VM grid. Wait until the status changes to Disabled.
-
At the right of the machine row, click More Actions and select Capture Image.
Note: You can create up to 20 custom images. If you cannot create a new one, consider deleting custom images to allow for creating new ones.The Capture machine as base image dialog opens:
- Fill in the Image Name field and, optionally, also fill in the Description field.
-
Optionally fill in the Implicit Username field with the user name you want VMs to use by default.
If you leave the Implicit Username field blank, the username uirobot is used.
- Click Create.
- Restart the machine and then re-enable accept jobs for the machine if you want it to be available for new or running jobs in the same pool.
After the custom image is created, you can use it as the base image for a Cloud Robot - VM machine template by selecting Customized for the Machine Image during the new template creation.
You can have up to 20 custom images of cloud robot machines.
If you can no longer create new ones, consider deleting some of your unused images as described below.
To view and manage your customized machine images for Cloud Robot - VM:
-
Go to Tenant > Settings and select the Cloud Robot Images tab:
All your existing images are listed on the page.
-
At the right of the image row, click More Actions and select:
- Edit Image to change the name or description of the image.
- Delete Image if you want to remove the image so that it is no longer available for use.
If you forgot the administrator credentials for one of your machines in a Manual pool, you can set a new username and password.
- Go to Tenant > Machines.
- At the right of the pool row, click More Actions and select Add or manage VMs.
- On the Manage Cloud Robot - VM page, at the right of the machine row, click More Actions and select Reset Admin Account.
-
On the Reset Admin Account page, define a new username and password for the administrator account of the machine.
The old credentials will no longer work after the reset.
- Click Update.
For a faster debugging, we recommend setting alerts for Cloud Robots on the Alert Preferences page.
- You can see pending jobs that are waiting for an available machine on the Jobs page.
-
You can see the created virtual machines in Orchestrator, on the Monitoring page of the folder. When a machine becomes available, it is already connected to Orchestrator, so it runs the next pending job.
If virtual machines are not being created, check the configuration of your cloud robot pool in Orchestrator.
- On the Alerts page in Orchestrator, you can set the State filter to All to see details about the Cloud Robots component and see as new robots are created or any errors. To see alerts, you need to have the Alerts - View and Machines - View permissions from a role that is directly assigned to your account (not inherited from groups), and to be added to the folders where cloud robots are used.
- You can view logs for a particular VM, as described below.
Logs are valuable reports used by administrators for diagnosing and troubleshooting machines. They provide detailed reports on important events happening on a machine such as machine events, job events, or Azure issues.
Logs are kept for 30 days. The oldest log entry is the first one deleted at the end of the retention period.
To view logs for your machine:
- Go to Tenant > Machines.
- At the right of the pool row, click More Actions and select Add or manage - VM.
-
On the Machine Event Logs page, you can see logs generated for that machine, most recent logs displayed first.
On the Manage Cloud Robot - VM page, at the right of the machine row, click More Actions and select View Logs.
-
For details about one of the logs, click Show details at the right of the log row. The Log details window shows a detailed report about that specific event.
While a job is in progress, you can access the live stream of the robot running the automation. If troubleshooting or debugging is needed, you can take control of the execution using your own mouse and keyboard, without pausing the automation.
The live streaming and remote control features are available for Automation Cloud Robots (both Serverless and VM), Elastic Robots, and Windows Robots version 2023.4+.
To enable live streaming and remote control, see Enabling the features.
UiPath allows automatic Windows security updates on all VMs, which are pushed by Microsoft daily. The security patches are downloaded and then installed while your VM is running or as soon as you start up your VMs.
Updates apply only if the VM runs for a sufficient time to allow the updates to finish. Otherwise, if the VM is closed either by you or by the autoscaler, the updates apply the next time you restart the VM.
To find out how you can request a free trial for Automation Cloud Robots - VM, check Requesting a service trial page.
What does a standard machine include?
All standard machines that we provide are Microsoft Azure virtual machines of the type Standard_E2s_v4, which have sufficient computing power for basic automations.
In addition, all standard VMs come with:
- the UiPath Studio and Robot software preinstalled
- the supported web browsers you might need for running automations.
If you need additional software or to set up the VM in a certain way, you can further customize it.
What machine size should I choose?
When choosing the machine size, here are some things to consider:
- How large are your datasets?
- What kind of applications are you planning to run and what are their requirements?
- How many applications do you plan to leverage?
- Will you leverage ML Skills and AI Packages?
- What kind of jobs will the machine run - small routine tasks, heavy-duty, one-time setup, debugging?
Based on the answers, you may be able to use a small machine, or may require a more powerful machine.
The machines sizes that you can choose from have the following technical specifications:
|
Size |
vCPU |
Memory (GiB) |
Max uncached disk throughput (IOPS/MBps) |
Max burst uncached disk throughput (IOPS/MBps) |
Expected network bandwidth (Mbps) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Small |
2 |
16 |
3200/48 |
4000/200 |
5,000 |
|
Standard |
4 |
32 |
6400/96 |
8000/200 |
10,000 |
|
Medium |
8 |
64 |
12800/192 |
16000/400 |
12,500 |
|
Large |
16 |
128 |
25600/384 |
32000/800 |
12,500 |
When are UiPath Studio and Robot updates applied?
We take care to update your VMs to use the latest version of UiPath Studio and Robot within approximately 2 weeks of a new version becoming available.
The update happens:
- when a machine needing an update first starts
- before a machine that was running jobs shuts down
- for machines that are in constant use and are not able to receive the update for 2 weeks since the update was available, we schedule a short maintenance window on the machine to apply the update.
Where are virtual machines created?
All virtual machines are created and hosted in our Microsoft Azure subscription.
In which region are virtual machines hosted?
All virtual machines are created and hosted in the tenant region.
Organization administrators can see what the region is for a tenant in Tenant Settings (Admin > Tenants).
Will the machine images that I created be automatically updated with the latest Windows version and updates?
No. If you want to install the latest Windows version and updates, you can:
-
connect to the machine using RDP to manually update Windows.
Then, if you want, you can also create an image of the customized machine and use it in other machine templates.
- configure a maintenance window for the template when you can push updates to all machines.
Does the maintenance window apply for all machines?
Only machines that belong to the machine template where the maintenance window was configured and for which Accept Jobs is Enabled enter the maintenance window.
Machines that are not running are automatically started for the maintenance window.
Are robot units consumed during the maintenance window?
The required robot units are consumed once per month, when the machine first starts. After that, it can run indefinitely for the whole month without consuming additional robot units.
Why do I have machines in a disabled state?
We automatically disable the most recently-created machines if they consume more robot units than you have available for your tenant.
How do I re-enable a disabled machine?
You must add sufficient robot units for that machine to the tenant. These will be consumed and your disabled machine will be automatically re-enabled within approximately 30 minutes.
If you do not allocate sufficient robot units to re-enable all of your disabled machines, only some machines are re-enabled. We start with the oldest machine and move up to the newest.
Do disabled machines consume robot units?
Yes. If you have disabled machines and add robot units to your tenant, they are automatically consumed to re-enable your disabled machines.
How can I prevent disabled machines from consuming newly-added robot units?
If, for example, you want to allocate some more robot units to a tenant for Automation Cloud robots - serverless, you need to make sure that you don't have disabled machines that would consume the robot units.
To prevent this, you must delete the disabled cloud robots - VM machines before you allocate the robot units to the tenant.
When defining the automatic machine template, make sure you have enough robot units (RUs)on your machines. The machine pool cannot consume robot units partially.
If you do not have enough RUs, the following consumption restrictions apply:
-
If your robot units do not match to the maximum number of VMs defined in the pool, we delete all machines in the pool and stop creating new ones until you allocate enough robot units to support the maximum number of machines.
Note: Instead of adding more robot units, we recommend reducing the maximum number of VMs in the pool. - A job running on a machine that does not have enough RUs generates the following alert "No VMs in <Pool_name> due to insufficient robot units."
- As soon as enough robot units become available, they are automatically consumed.
- If you have multiple pools in an overconsumption state, we allocate any available robot units to the last created pool subsets.
Example: You have five pools, each having a maximum of three machines, totaling 15 machines. Your RUs can support two machines, meaning all five pools are now in an overconsumption state, so you cannot use them.
- You add the required RUs to support five more machines. Now, you can use a total of seven machines.
- Two pools become available and they consume RUs for six machines (two pools of three machines each).
- Three pools remain in the overconsumption state, and the available RUs serve one machine. Therefore, the two pools are created last.
Releasing and reusing robot units
- Once automatic pools are created, the allocated RUs are consumed.
-
When a VM is deleted from a manual pool or when an automatic pool is deleted, the corresponding RUs are released in the following 24h.
-
For the remaining of the billing month, the RUs can be consumed in the same tenant and for the same cloud robot type (in this case, Cloud robots - VM).
-
For the following months, released RUs can be used across tenants, and for all cloud robot types (Serverless or VMs)
-
Monthly renewal of Robot Units
The expiry dates of Robot Units is defined by the calendar month and the license start/expiration date.
Say you have a license that started on January 1st and expires on May 15th. In this, case:
-
You can use RUs starting with January 1st.
-
The RU allocation for January exipres on January 31st.
-
For April, your robot units are renewed on April 1st, and expire on April 30th.
-
For May, your robot units are renewed on May 1st, and expire on the same day the license expires, which is May 15th.
To avoid managing different accounts on each VM, and to use a single set of credentials for authentication, you can join your VMs to a domain. This way you can integrate your machines with an existing identity infrastructure, and your cloud robots can run jobs under a domain user.
If you have domain-joined VMs, you cannot take a snapshot of those custom images.
There are three mainly used identity solutions, summarized in the following table, along with the corresponding domain connection approach and the current availability in UiPath:
|
Identity solution |
Availability in UiPath |
Connection to the domain |
|---|---|---|
|
Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS) (*) |
Available |
via site-to-site VPN Gateway |
|
Azure Active Directory Domain Services (Azure AD DS) (*) |
Available |
via site-to-site VPN Gateway |
|
Azure Active Directory |
Available |
via a Windows Desktop machine |
(*) [Preview capability] Active Directory Domain Services (on-prem AD) and Azure Active Directory Domain Services (Azure AD DS) support automatic domain join of the machines in the pool (see step 17 in the Creating the Cloud Robot pool procedure)
Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS)
Use this solution to manage identity and access in on-premises environments.
AD DS allows your cloud robots to authenticate and access on-premises network resources via on-premises domain controllers. The site-to-site connection to the domain controller is established through the VPN Gateway service. You continue to maintain all of the associated infrastructure and directory components.
Read the Azure documentation for more details.
Azure Active Directory Domain Services (Azure AD DS)
Use this solution to manage domain services such as domain join, group policy, LDAP, or Kerberos/NTLM authentication, the same as you would use for an on-premises Active Directory.
Azure AD DS allows your Automation Cloud robots to authenticate and access cloud network resources via Azure AD DS managed domains. Additionally, you can join and manage VMs in Azure. The site-to-site connection to the Azure AD DS managed domains is established through the VPN Gateway service.
You do not need to deploy or maintain the AD DS infrastructure for components such as VMs, Windows servers, or domain controllers.
To join an Automation Cloud Robot - VM to an Azure AD DS managed domain:
- Sign in to your VM.
- Access Server Manager.
-
On the left-side panel of the Server Manager, select Local Server, then select WORKGROUP.
- In the System Properties > Computer Name tab, click Change. The Computer Name/Domain Changes window opens.
-
In the Domain field, specify the name of your managed domain. For example,
aaddscontoso.com. - To join the domain, provide the credentials of a user that is part of the managed domain.
Note:
1: The user account must exist in your managed domain or in your Azure AD tenant. During domain joining, accounts from external directories associated with your Azure AD tenant cannot authenticate correctly.
2: Account credentials can be specified either in the UPN format, which is the recommended format, or in an SAMAccountName format. For example, user "VMadmin" in UPN format is "vmadmin@contosoaadds.com", and in SAMAccountName format is "AADDSCONTOSO\vmadmin".
- Click OK. Wait a few seconds until the VM is joined to the managed domain. If successful, a welcome message box is displayed.
- Restart the VM to complete the domain-join process.
- Running Unattended Automations Using Cloud Robots - VM
- Prerequisites
- Video walkthrough
- Step 1. Creating the Cloud Robot Pool
- Step 2. Adding Machines for Manually Managed VM Pools
- Step 3. Customizing the Machine (optional)
- Step 4. Preparing Cloud Robots for Use
- Uploading your own image
- Editing existing cloud robot pools to use your own image
- Reusing Customized Machine Images (for Manual pools)
- Managing Custom Images
- Resetting Credentials for a Machine (for Manual pools)
- Monitoring
- Viewing Logs for a Machine
- Live streaming and remote control
- Security updates
- Asking for a trial
- Frequently Asked Questions
- About Machines
- About the Maintenance Window
- Disabled Machines
- Robot Units Consumption of Automatic VM Pools
- Domain-joined Machines
