No infrastructure? No problem! Build and run robots quickly whenever you want, with SaaS robots hosted in the UiPath Automation Cloud
What is Software as a Service (SaaS)?
This type of service provides companies with access to software applications that are hosted on the cloud. End users are not responsible for anything in this model, they only use programs to complete their tasks. It involves applications being consumed and used by organizations. Usually, organizations pay for their use of the application.
Example - Office 365, Salesforce
UiPath Automation Cloud Robots are SaaS robots, hosted in Automation Cloud, letting you run your automations instantly, without thinking about the needed infrastructure.
UiPath Automation Cloud Robots come in two flavors:
- Serverless – run background and UI browser automation easily without worrying about infrastructure setup.
Key Features: Serverless Automation Cloud Robots are a pool of Linux-based robots that can immediately run cross-platform automation jobs based on browser apps and API calls. Serverless Cloud Robots automatically scale up and down as needed to run these jobs in parallel based on demand.
With Serverless Robots, you can run unattended jobs for the following types of processes:
- Background, cross-platform automation.
- UI Browser automation with Chromium via WebDriver.
- Trigger-based automation through Integration Service.
They can run up to 15-minute jobs with 50 jobs running concurrently.
Limitations:
- Only run.
- Background, cross-platform automations.
- UI Browser automation with Chromium.
- Trigger-based automation through Integration Service.
- Each Job is limited to running for no more than 15 minutes.
- Run up to 50 jobs concurrently.
- Virtual Machine (VM) – Access to a fully customizable virtual machine and set up UiPath Robots to run any job in a matter of minutes.
Key Features: VM (Virtual Machine) Automation Cloud Robots are unattended robots running on Windows VMs in Automation Cloud.
You can provision these types of robots on machines for which you use the predefined template, without any operation done outside Automation Cloud. You have full access to customize these VMs however you want, including installing the software needed to run processes, domain join the machine to your network, or setting up a VPN to access on-prem resources. You can do all this within Cloud Orchestrator and the Robots can take on almost any unattended job you need.
- Easy to set up and customize.
- No additional infrastructure setup.
- Can execute almost any unattended process.
Limitations:
- You can create one virtual machine for each Automation Cloud Robot license allocated to your tenant. If you don’t have any unused licenses, you cannot create more virtual machines. Basically, each VM Cloud Robot will consume a fixed Robot Unit per month. You can only create additional VMs when there are enough unused Robot Units in your tenant.
- Adding a cloud robot pool to a folder doesn’t automatically add it to its sub-folders. If you want to use the machine in a sub-folder, you must add the pool to the sub-folder.
- By default, you can only run up to two concurrent foreground processes on one machine. This is because the included Windows Server license only allows up to two remote desktop connections simultaneously.
- You can create up to 20 customized images.
Licensing for Automation Cloud Robots:
Serverless and VM cloud robots will consume Robot Units (Rus - service consumption unit license) but in a different way. Robot Units are available in bundles, and purchasing bundles lets you define the automation power you want to use, without restriction.
Robot Units have to be assigned to specific tenants to use them. RUs can be split across tenants and can be re-allocated to other tenants, in case they aren’t used. So, you can buy a bundle of 72000 RUs/ year and distribute the robot units between two, or three tenants.
Here’s an example of how a robot unit bundle could be structured and consumed:
- When you buy it, you get 72,000 RUs/year, meaning 6,000 RUs/month.
- RUs are allocated at the tenant level. They can be split across tenants and can be re-allocated to other tenants in case they are not used.
- Unused RUs expire at the end of the month. Any remaining balance doesn’t carry over into the next month. So, they reset from month to month.
- If a serverless robot runs for a maximum of 15 minutes at a size of 2 Gb, it’ll consume 30 RUs.
- If a serverless robot runs for 10 minutes at a size of 10 Gb, it will consume 100 RUs.
- A VM robot consumes 6000 RUs when you select the Standard Machine option at VM machine creation.
- You have a tenant with 30,000 RUs allocated. If on the 31st of May, the tenant has 3 Cloud Robot - VM standard machines, on the 1st of June, when the next month’s RUs are allocated, the amount of 18,000 RUs (3 x 6,000) is automatically deducted from the tenant’s RU balance. Therefore, this tenant has only 12,000 available RUs at the beginning of the month.
Robot unit reserve:
For Cloud Robot - VM machines, once a machine is created and the RUs are consumed, we also make note of the required RU quantity and internally reserve it for the following month.
Deleted machines: If, during the month, you delete a Cloud Robot- VM machine, the RUs that were consumed to create the machine are not refunded. You can, however, for the duration of the month, create another Cloud Robot - VM machine without using additional RUs. Once consumed, RUs allow you the use of one Cloud Robot - VM machine for the entire month - they are not tied to a particular machine.
If you want to reduce your monthly RU budget for Cloud Robot - VM, you can delete a Cloud Robot - VM machine before the month ends. This way, RUs are no longer reserved for the machine and are not consumed from next month’s RUs.
Comparision on different tiers
| Plan perks | Community | Free | Pro Trial | Pro |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Robot Units for running shared automations using serverless cloud robots. | Includes 300/month. | 0 | Includes 12k/month, shared for serverless and VM cloud robots. | As purchased |
| Robot Units (RUs) for running individual automations within Personal Workspaces using serverless cloud robots | Includes 300 RUs/month/developer-type user license 2 | 0 | Includes 300 RUs/month/developer-type user license | Includes 300 RUs/month/developer-type user license |
| Robot Units for VM cloud robots | 0 | 0 | 12k/month, shared for serverless and VM cloud robots | As purchased |
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