About Environments and Environment Pools

An environment is the computer or virtual machine where instances of your robots run. An environment pool is similar to a cluster and is a collection of computers or virtual machines that can run specific robots. You must associate each environment with exactly one environment pool.

Your Requirements Determine the Environments You Need

Knowing a robot's duration is the key to setting up environments effectively and efficiently.

For example, if a robot takes one minute or less to run, and you need to run one transaction per minute, you typically need only one environment.

However, if you need to run two transactions per minute, you need two environments, or you'll end up with a bottleneck situation and delayed transactions.

Flexibility Thanks to Shared Environment Pools

You create an environment pool in a project. You have several options for the robots that the environment pool can run:

  • Only robots in the project

  • Robots in all projects

This flexibility allows you to organize automation solutions in a way that works for your business, while still having the flexibility to choose the right environment pool for each robot to run on. See Create an Environment Pool.

Your Responsibilities

Your organization is responsible for the following tasks:

  • Setting up and managing the environments that you need to run your robots.

    An environment is typically a Windows virtual machine (VM). You can also use a Mac or Linux machine.

    Depending on your automation requirements, you might build several VMs or hundreds of VMs for robots to run on.

    See Specify Where a Robot Runs

  • Associating each environment with exactly one environment pool.

    For example, you might have an environment pool for human resources robots, another for finance robots, and so on.

    See Add Computers to an Environment Pool.

  • Installing and managing the robot agent on each environment.

    See About the Robot Agent.