Orchestrator uses same account on two machines

[Rasmus_J]

okay so somehting i’ve been wondering about for a few hours now.

We have two servers, lets call them 1 and 2, used for running automations. We have two accounts, lets call them A and B, so orchestrator can run any account on any server at the same time so we can run multiple automations.

If i log into server 1 and 2 with account A and start assistant on both of them, only one is getting licensed.
If i log into server 1 and 2 with two different accounts, one using A and the other B, both get licensed

BUT
If orchestrator run an unattended automation, one one each server but using the same account it’s fine??? How and why???

I even tried to mannually start two automations from orchestrator with a few seconds in between and again it did run on two different servers but still with the same account.

I really need to understand the logic behind this, why can Orchestrator run automations at the same time with the same account, but we cant login to the exact same servers with the exact same account and do the same thing when testing for development.

It seems insane to me that i have to upkeep two account for the sake of some abitrary license jargon while in the real world when it comes down to it the system that runs the automations unattended really don’t care. In my point of view the robot when one server and account is in use it should use the other account and server, but here it’s only using the other server, same account. @loginerror you always good at finding answers to my crazy posts, hope you can help once again

[postwick (Paul Ostwick)]

Because that’s how the licensing works. Attended vs Unattended is different.

[loginerror (Maciej Kuźmicz)]

We deleted the unnecessary off topic discussion, it simply doesn’t belong here. Let’s focus on the main question.

I must say that I will have to double check with the team. @Rasmus_J Could you please share:

• your specific use case that you are pursuing (why is having 1 account important to you)
• configuration of the user for both robots as well the way you connect it to the Assistant
• versions of the UiPath software that you’re using (is it Automation Cloud orchestrator or is it maybe an on-prem one?)

[radutzp (Radu Tapus)]

Hi @Rasmus_J,

As @postwick stated this behavior is based on our licensing terms. We sell:

• per-user licenses for attended robots: that means each user has their own robot and they can use it on only one machine at a time. Something like what some video streaming services have: you have a license to watch videos from one device at a time; when you are trying to watch movies from a second device at the same time, it gives you an error or it logs you out from the first device.
• per concurrent runtime licenses for unattended robots: this means we charge for the capacity to run processes in parallel and we don’t care if you are using 1,2,5 or 10 users for running the processes. Similar to what Netflix has for the premium accounts: you can watch on two devices at the same time but it doesn’t care what user are you using. You can watch from Jane’s account on both TVs or you can watch Jane’s account on one TV and from John’s account on another. It would still work for as long as you are only watching on two devices.

I hope this sheds a light on the logic behind this behavior. We are blocking attended uses on the same account because it may be used in an improper way: have one unattended license and make it available for tens of machines thus tens of users.

Also, if you could answer @loginerror’s questions, maybe we will be able to come up with a solution for your problems.

Thanks!

[Rasmus_J]

@loginerror @radutzp
This was the answer i was looking for, an explanation of the technical working of the license and that was not what postwick said

Regarding loginserrors questions, even though we are one municipality we pay for services and licenses internally pr user to our main IT department. This is why I’m trying to figure out pros and cons regarding shutting down one of our accounts and in that case all the licenses tied to that account. internally and externally

now the problem is when we login to the terminal server with one of the robot accounts to test the automation, as we often experience that an automation working on our workstations doesn’t work on the terminal server, the unattended license will act as an attended license and block any other uses and in turn the triggered automation will throw an error in our production environment if it picked the same license as we use for attended use. I thought it would be able to see the use and just be pending, but no. We use UiPath 2021.4.3 and on-prem Orchestrator, and running modern folders with machine keys and user login enabled (machine keys for the farm, user login for developer machines although it requires us to add machine key first)