Installing IBM RPA with Automation Anywhere Control Room

How you install Control Room depends on whether you are installing it on an on-premise server or on a server instance hosted by a cloud service provider and whether you intend to use it in a non-production (express installation) or a production environment (custom installation). For performance and disaster recovery in production environments, you can also choose to install Control Room in a clustered environment.

The following instructions are for an on-premise installation. For information about installing Control Room on a server instance provided by a cloud provider, such as Microsoft Azure or Amazon Web Services, see Installing Enterprise Control Room on Microsoft Azure and Installing Enterprise Control Room on Amazon Web Services in the Automation Anywhere documentation.

Before you begin

Important: The installer supports only English and Japanese operating systems. You must set the language of your Windows operating system to “English (United States)” or "Japanese". If you use a different setting, you might observe issues during installation or running the program. For more information about supported languages, see Language support for IBM RPA.

Review the IBM® RPA with Automation Anywhere system requirements. For more information, see the IBM Robotic Process Automation with Automation Anywhere compatibility report.
Prepare the environment on each computer that you intend to use for the Control Room installation. Be aware of the following considerations:

Database servers

Verify that you have a supported database server installed. For non-production environments (express installation), the database server can be installed on the same computer as IBM RPA with Automation Anywhere but for production environments (custom installation), install it on a separate computer.
New in 11.0.0.9 IBM RPA with Automation Anywhere has a Control Room database and a Bot Insight database. For custom installations, you must create these databases and the database users before you install Control Room. Also note the database names and the connection information because these are needed during the Control Room installation. For information about the permissions the database users need, see Database requirements in the Automation Anywhere documentation.

Clustered environments

All nodes in the clustered environment must be available before you install Control Room. In addition, ensure that local IP addresses are configured on the computer on which you install Control Room.

.NET Framework

Ensure that the required version of .NET Framework is installed. If it isn't installed, go to the Microsoft Download Center, and download and install the package that is applicable to your version of Windows.
Download and extract the files in the Control Room installation package. For more information, see Downloading the installation packages.
Important: The installer supports only English and Japanese operating systems. Ensure that the installation path and installation parameter values contain only ASCII characters. If your operating system uses a non-supported language, it might contain translated object names and non-ASCII system parameters that can cause the installer to fail.

About this task

Express and custom installation options are available for Control Room. The installation option you choose determines how you interact with the installation process.

Express installation: An express installation is the simplest and quickest method for installing and configuring Control Room. The installation program uses default values for most installation options. In a wizard, you provide values for the remaining options, such as the connection information for your databases. This installation type is suitable for non-production environments and quick proof-of-concept scenarios.
Custom installation: Use a custom installation for all production environments. A wizard guides you through the Control Room settings. During the installation, you configure the initial Control Room setup, including the database type, the authentication type, IP addresses, certificates and ports, and service credentials.

Procedure

Install the Control Room.
1. In the directory that contains the extracted installation package, right-click installControlRoom.bat, and select Run as administrator.
2. Select your IBM Robotic Process Automation with Automation Anywhere edition: Enterprise (1) or Express (2).
3. Read and accept the license terms.
4. Select the installation type: Express or Custom.
  The installation wizard guides you through the installation and configuration steps.
  Express installation
  
  During installation, you specify the database server settings and the authentication method. Default values are used for all other settings. For more information about the initial setup, see Express Installation in the Automation Anywhere documentation.
  
  Custom installation
  During installation, you can specify values for all the configuration settings. These settings include:
  
  The system IP addresses for configuring Control Room on single or multiple nodes. For more information, see Configure IP Cluster.
  
  Configure Elasticsearch credentials. For more information, see Configure Elasticsearch credentials.
  
  Generating or importing certificates for Transport Layer Security (TLS). For more information, see Configure application Transport Layer Security.
  
  Service credentials for accounts that are used by Windows services. These credentials consist of a user name and password. For information about authorization requirements and password rules, see Configure service credentials.
  
  Control Room and Bot Insight database information, including database type, database server name, and the method of authentication for the Control Room. For more information, see Configure database type and server and Configure the Bot Insight database.
  Restriction: If you use Windows or SQL Server authentication, your password cannot include semicolons (;) or ampersands (&).
  
  For more information about the custom installation, see Custom Installation in the Automation Anywhere documentation.
Control Room is installed with the settings you specify. By default, Control Room launches and the setting page is displayed.
Complete post installation tasks.
1. Configure post installation settings.
  These settings include language locale and region. To ensure that anti-virus scans don't interfere with running bots, exclude scans from running on the Control Room database. For more information about the settings, see Configuring post installation settings.
2. Verify Automation Anywhere Windows services are running.
  For more information, see Verifying Automation Anywhere services.
3. Configure your authentication method.
  The following authentication types are supported: Active Directory, Control Room database authentication, and single sign-on. For more information about configuring these authentication options, see Configuring Enterprise Control Room authentication options in the Automation Anywhere documentation.
4. Optional: Enable certificate-based login authentication between IBM RPA with Automation Anywhere clients and Control Room.
  Configure a reverse proxy server, such as IBM Security Access Manager WebSEAL, store the client certificate on each client machine, then configure clients to use the certificate. For more information, see Installing an IBM RPA client from the command line and Installing an IBM RPA client silently by using a response file.

Results

The initial setup of the control room is complete.

What to do next

Visit the IBM Support Fix Central website to check for available fix packs. If upgrades are available, install them by following the procedure in Installing fix packs.
Complete additional configuration tasks, such as creating roles and users. For more information, see Setting up IBM RPA Control Room.