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Usage

Using Enterprise Runners in Jobs

Existing jobs

Once the new architecture is enabled as described in Configurationopen in new window,existing jobs will default to the Local Runner even if no Runner selection is made in the job definition. The Local Runner has equivalent execution context as Process Automation instance/server.

Creating jobs with Runners

Once the new architecture is enabled as described in Configurationopen in new window, the Job edit menu will display a new “Nodes & Runners” tab where Node and Runner selection is configured for the job. When creating a job or editing a job, a user can select Runners based on tags with the following options: Options to select runners by tags

  • Selecting Runners with “Choose Tags” option from the drop-down list: Selecting runners by tags selection
  • Selecting Runners by “Enter a Tag Filter” option and typing the Runner Tag name: Selecting remote runners with tag search
  • Selecting the “Local Runner” option and choosing the Local runner: Select the local runner

Selecting Runners when running Jobs

The “Runnerset Can be Changed at Runtime” option controls if the Runnerset selection can be changed when running a Job. If selected, a list of Runnersets will be presented in the Job invocation screen otherwise the Runnerset selected in the job definition during edit time will be used for job execution. Allow runner selection at runtime

Dispatching to Nodes with Runners

Once you have picked a Runnerset for the Job, you can choose how the Runner should behave by selecting a Dispatch mode: “Run on Runner” or “Dispatch to Nodes through Runner”. If you select “Dispatch to Nodes through Runner”, the nodes related options will display and those are identical to previous versions of Process Automation. Dispatching jobs through runners

Running jobs with Runners

A user can change which Runner will execute the job with the “Change the Target Runner”. This option is useful if you want to target different environments with the same job, for example running the same job in Dev or Staging environments that are setup with different Runners. This is possible only If the “Runnerset Can be Changed at Runtime” option was picked for this Job definition. If you check “Change the Target Runner” the same Runner selection UI as in the “Editing Job” will let you pick the Runner set. Run job and pick a runner

Viewing Job Activity with the new architecture

The runner carrying out the job execution is displayed at the top of the Job execution activity. Example below: The job below was executed through the “Ansible-Runner” View runner in a job execution

Key Storage through Runner

The Enterprise Runner can be used to retrieve keys from secrets providers that are not directly accessible from the Process Automation cluster or from Runbook Automation due to network or security boundaries. For configuration and usage details, see Key Storage through Enterprise Runneropen in new window.

Node Discovery with Runners

Runners can be used to discover nodes in environments that are not directly accessible from the Process Automation cluster or from Runbook Automation: Node Source Runner Instructions on how to discover nodes using the Enterprise Runner, click hereopen in new window.

As of version 4.16.0, the following Node Sources are available to use through the Enterprise Runner:

  • Ansible Inventory
  • VMware*
  • Kubernetes
  • Docker
  • File
  • Script

Node Sources Available on Runner

If a Node Source is selected that is not in this list, the following error will appear after the node source tries to gather resources: Reason: The datadog-resource-model plugin was not found on Runner ID = US-WEST-1-QA. You may need to upgrade your Runner or select a different Runner. In a future version, the Node Source configuration will dynamically know which runners support which Node Source plugins.