Registering and managing runners

A runner is the execution agent that runs your CloudRadial AutomationAI workflows inside your own Azure subscription. This article covers what a runner is, how to register one in AutomationAI, the one-time runner secret, the hosting plan and instance choices, the health dashboard, and revoking. It is for Admin and Owner roles.

• What a Runner Is
• Registering a Runner
• The Runner Secret
• Hosting Plan and Instances
• The Runners Health Dashboard
• Revoking a Runner

What a Runner Is

A runner is an Azure Functions app you deploy and operate in your own Azure subscription. It polls the AutomationAI control plane on a timer, leases any work waiting for it, executes that work, and reports the result back. The control plane never connects in to a runner, so a runner is never directly reachable from the outside — all communication is outbound from the runner. This is why work does not start instantly: it begins on the runner's next poll.

Registering a Runner

Open Runners and click Register runner, then provide:

• Runner name — lowercase letters, digits and single hyphens, starting with a letter, 2–32 characters; it is baked into the runner's Azure resource names so it is easy to match in the Azure portal, and must be unique among your runners
• Instances — how many copies of the runner to deploy (you can change this later)

Registering mints the runner's credentials and lets you download a setup package. Registration only creates the credentials in AutomationAI; the actual Azure install is a separate step covered in the Installing and operating runners articles.

The Runner Secret

The runner secret is shown only once, at registration. Copy it then — it is never displayed again and is not stored.

After you register, AutomationAI displays the runner secret a single time and lets you copy it. Only a hash of the secret is kept server-side, so it cannot be retrieved later. Save it in your password manager: the installer prompts you to paste it during setup and never writes it to disk. The setup package can be re-downloaded at any time, but the secret cannot — if you lose it, you must register a new runner.

Hosting Plan and Instances

When you download the setup package you choose a hosting plan:

• Flex Consumption — scales to zero and is pay-per-use, with cold-start latency on the first poll after idle
• Premium (EP1) — always warm with no cold starts, at a higher monthly floor

The instance count is how many copies of the runner you deploy. All instances share one identity and one secret, and any instance can pick up the next job. To change the count later, open the runner and use Deploy / scale. For the plan and scaling trade-offs in depth, see the Installing and operating runners articles.

The Runners Health Dashboard

The Runners list shows each runner's current health from its check-ins. A runner that has not polled within five minutes is treated as offline regardless of the status it last reported. Each row shows:

• Health — active and available, never polled, unhealthy (polled but not within the window), or revoked
• Last seen — how long ago the runner last checked in
• Version — the version the runner reported, with an update indicator when a newer one is available
• Instances — how many instances are healthy against the desired count

Click a runner to open its dashboard for recent execution stats, per-instance liveness, and its actions. Revoked runners are hidden from the list by default; use the Show revoked runners toggle to reveal them.

Revoking a Runner

Revoking is done from a runner's dashboard, in the Danger zone. It permanently retires the runner's credentials: the runner's next poll is rejected, it stops receiving work immediately, and any deployments bound to it will fail to dispatch. Revoking cannot be undone — to run again you register a new runner. Once revoked, the runner can be permanently deleted, which frees its name for reuse; deleting does not remove the Azure Function Apps in your subscription, which you can clean up in Azure.