Blue Prism Cloud self-service reboot

Introduced in October 2023, Blue Prism Cloud includes a self-service reboot tool called VMRestart. This enables you to reboot or restart a Blue Prism Cloud virtual machine without having to submit a service request.

By utilizing Microsoft Azure Functions and Managed Identities, the self-service reboot tool (VMRestart) provides access via the Management Server to the back-end Azure functionality that enables you to directly restart specific virtual machines.

Azure Functions are serverless solutions provided by Microsoft, which enable a comprehensive set of event-driven triggers and bindings to be used that connect Blue Prism Cloud functions to other services, without the need to develop additional code.

VMRestart

  1. Log onto your Blue Prism Cloud Management Server.

  2. Launch VMRestart using the shortcut on the server desktop.

  3. On the VM Restart Tool screen, enter the name of the virtual machine you want to restart. You can enter more than one.

  4. Click Restart VM(s).

  5. Follow the remaining onscreen instructions and enter any required information.

    In the background, the function triggers the restart on the specified virtual machines. If the restart does not execute successfully, an attempt will be made to start the VM from a “non-running” state.

Considerations

  • Keep in mind, having to regularly reboot your VMs or a specific VM is usually indicative of some underlying issue. Most Blue Prism Cloud platforms already undergo a standard weekly reboot. If you find yourself rebooting a particular VM often, please raise a support case so that the support team can investigate for any underlying causes.
  • Deployment issues can occur if your network/security teams have implemented restrictions allowing our “standard and required” remote scripting, deployment capabilities. You will know if the deployment was blocked, as you will not find VMRestart in the public folder of the Management Server (MS1).

Security and Access

VMRestart utilizes a Managed Identity account for the Management Server to authenticate and has explicit permissions on a specified set of resources in your dedicated Azure Subscription. VMRestart is also explicitly limited to the restart command on the virtual machines.