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Execution Environment

An Execution Environment (EE) in vHaaS is the compute unit you connect to in order to access an Assembly's hardware — a physical machine such as a PC, NUC or Raspberry Pi, or a virtual machine. Execution Environments are registered under a Cluster and assigned to Assemblies by administrators. When you book an Assembly and connect to it, you connect to its assigned Execution Environment.

  • An Assembly and its Execution Environment always belong to the same Cluster.
  • If no Execution Environment is assigned, the Assembly has no hardware access path and cannot be used for active Sessions.

Connection methods

vHaaS provides two ways to connect to an Execution Environment during an active Session:

  • Browser-based (recommended) — You can connect to your Execution Environment and work on a remote desktop.
  • Console tab — the Assembly page has a Console tab that gives direct terminal access to the Execution Environment without going through the Connect dialog.

See Work on an Execution Environment for step-by-step connection instructions.

Credentials

Execution Environment credentials are stored with our secret management solution and provisioned automatically when a Session starts. Users do not manage credentials directly.

Labels and properties

Execution Environments can be tagged with labels (e.g. windows, test-vm) and key-value properties (e.g. project:dummy) to support grouping, targeted software rollout, and filtering across a Cluster's Execution Environment inventory. They are set when the Execution Environment is registered and can be changed afterwards.

Software environment

Execution Environments in Clusters operated by Vector come with a set of pre-installed software maintained by the vHaaS team — from basic tools present on every host to productive and test-system configurations. Software is installed and updated exclusively via Chocolatey. Users and teams can request custom software configurations for their specific needs.

Creating and managing Execution Environments

Execution Environments are registered, configured, and assigned to Assemblies by Organization Admins. An Execution Environment can either run in a Cluster operated by Vector or be a self-managed machine in your own lab that connects to vHaaS through the vHaaS Agent.

See Set Up an Execution Environment for the end-to-end workflow, the available configuration options, and troubleshooting.