Upgrade considerations for Relativity

Please complete the following checks prior to beginning your upgrade to Server 2024.

• Application services shutdown - all Relativity services must be stopped on all servers prior to starting the upgrade. You can use the Relativity-PreUpgrade-CleanUp.ps1 script described below to stop services.
• Disk space verification and temp folder cleanup - Server 2024 includes enhancements to our temp directory structure to allow compatibility with Windows Storage Sense*. Due to these changes, Relativity temp files may be orphaned after upgrading to Server 2024. The Relativity installer does not automatically clean up these temp files, so it is possible for services to be disrupted if the drive becomes full. To prevent this from occurring, Relativity recommends clearing existing temp files and ensuring at least 50GB of free disk space on Web and Agent servers before upgrading to Server 2024. Customers may use the attached Relativity-PreUpgrade-CleanUp.ps1 script to facilitate this on each server.
  • Relativity-PreUpgrade-CleanUp.ps1 - this script automates the process of shutting down Relativity services, checking available disk space and clearing files from the following Relativity-only temp folders. This script is available in the installation files attached to the Relativity Server 2024 GA installation files Community Site article and should be executed prior to beginning your upgrade.
    • {drive}:\Users\{service_account_name}\AppData\Local\Temp
    • {drive}:\Users\{service_account_name}\AppData\Local\Relativity\TempStorage

Note: *Clients who have previously disabled Windows Storage Sense can now enable the feature because Relativity Server 2024 utilizes a new custom temp location at {drive}:\Users\{service_account_name}\AppData\Local\Relativity\TempStorage.

Note: You must use RabbitMQ version 3.12.x or 3.13.x and a compatible version of Erlang. Note, however, that there are compatibility issues between RabbitMQ 3.12.x and Erlang 26.0 and 26.1. There are no issues with Erlang 26.2 and above and RabbitMQ 3.12.x. For compatibility details, see Erlang Version Requirements. RabbitMQ 3.13.x is certified compatible with Server 2024 except when TLS 1.3 is enabled. We will conduct additional testing immediately following the Server 2024 GA release to confirm compatibility when TLS 1.3 is enabled. Ensure that you're using the 64-bit version of Erlang, or else the system will be constrained to 2GB of memory. For details on RabbitMQ's version policies, see RabbitMQ versions. Review the RabbitMQ upgrade overview beforehand to avoid issues during the upgrade process.

The following agents are new:

• RSMF Slicing Agent - Works with the Message Broker to complete RSMF slicing operation to create subsets of larger RSMF documents/conversations.

There are a number of new, removed, and modified instance settings for Server 2023. See Instance settings change log for more information.

The default value of the TreatArmRestoreJobFailureAsWarning instance setting (which you must manually add to your instance) is now True. This means that, by default, ARM restore jobs will skip analytics indexes and structured analytics sets that have failed. If you'd like to revert to the previous behavior of ARM erroring when an index or set fails, set this instance setting to false.

Effective with the Relativity Server 2023 General Availability (GA) release, the NuGet packages required to extend core functionality and implement custom applications for Relativity Server will be published and maintained separately from the SDKs hosted on the Relativity NuGet Gallery. The latest SDKs for Relativity Server will be hosted in a separate repository, while the Relativity NuGet Gallery is now considered the repository for RelativityOne packages. Separating the RelativityOne and Relativity Server packages provides for a more stable and reliable developer experience as each platform evolves. You are not required to recompile your custom application against the relocated packages for your application to work on Server 2023. Custom applications compiled against the packages hosted on the Relativity NuGet Gallery will continue to work on future Relativity Server releases, as long as no breaking changes are introduced by the RelativityOne platform. However, we do recommend recompiling your code to consume the new repository packages when possible, to ensure that your application is running against the latest Relativity Server SDKs. The new package repository and documentation for consuming the Server-specific packages will be made available within a few weeks of the official Server 2023 release. We will make an announcement and provide additional documentation when the repository is made available. For more information, see the Relativity Server 2023 Developer News topic on the platform site.

For Server 2023, versions 3.11.x, 3.12.x, and 3.13.x are supported. You must use RabbitMQ version 3.11.x - 3.13.x and a compatible version of Erlang. For compatibility details, see Erlang Version Requirements. Ensure that you're using the 64-bit version of Erlang, or else the system will be constrained to 2GB of memory.

For additional details about migrating from Service Bus to RabbitMQ, see Migrating the Service Bus Infrastructure on the Community.
You must have valid Community credentials to access this information.

Effective with Relativity Server 2022, some Relativity calls now use the HTTP PATCH verb. You may need to explicitly configure your IIS servers to allow the PATCH verb. Kepler calls that use the PATCH verb will return a 404 Not Found error if IIS is not configured to allow the PATCH verb.

The new Relativity Document Conversion application and associated public RESTful API endpoints replaces the Cache Manager agent as the solution for clearing conversion cache files. Relativity Document Conversion will only support time-based cache deletion, and the clear cache button will no longer be available on the Cache Location Server page. Although the Cache Manager Agent will still appear on the Agents tab, it is not operational as long as the Relativity Document Conversion application is active. The Cache Manager Agent will be removed altogether in a future release.

There are three agents for the Relativity Document Conversion application:

• Conversion Cache Manager—generates jobs per active Cache Location Server during off hours, which kicks off the cleanup process.
• Conversion Cache Delete File Discovery—executes the first phase of the cleanup process, Discovery, identifies and batches up old/expired cache files for each workspace of Cache Location Server on a particular job.
• Conversion Cache Delete File Worker—executes the second phase where all cached files that were batched up in Discovery phase are deleted.

See the Relativity.Conversion.Cache filter group in the instance settings descriptions topic for information on the settings for these agents.

Server 2022 is the last Relativity version that supports Service Bus, as we will be deprecating Service Bus in Server 2023. We recommend that you begin converting from Service Bus to RabbitMQ beginning in Server 2022. You must use RabbitMQ version 3.11.x or 3.12.x and a compatible version of Erlang; however, you cannot currently run version 3.12.x with any supported version of Erlang above v25.x. Ensure that you're using the 64-bit version of Erlang, or else the system will be constrained to 2GB of memory. If you intend to use RabbitMQ 3.11.x or 3.12.x, you must have Relativity Server 2022 Patch 2 for 12.1.537.3 (released on January 5, 2023) installed, and you must have valid Community credentials to access and download it.

Note: You must use RabbitMQ version 3.12.x, or 3.13.x and a compatible version of Erlang. For compatibility details, see Erlang Version Requirements. Ensure that you're using the 64-bit version of Erlang, or else the system will be constrained to 2GB of memory. For details on RabbitMQ's version policies, see RabbitMQ versions. Review the RabbitMQ upgrade overview beforehand to avoid issues during the upgrade process.

You can now enable HTTPS on the dtSearch service, which is a self-hosted web service that runs on any agent server on which the dtSearch Search Manager agent is enabled. Like Service Host, this service is not TLS-encrypted out of the box, but you can now enable this service. For details see HTTPS setup for dtSearch service.

The following agents are new:

• Relativity Forms Metrics Collector—runs once a day during Off Hours and collects data about Object Types and their usage of Relativity Forms.

• Mass Operation Manager—works with Service Bus to complete mass operations within the environment.

The following instance settings are new:

• CustomPageDeletionDelay—the amount of time, in seconds, that the system will wait before removing previous versions of a deployed custom page.

• CustomPageDeploymentPath—the server path that custom pages will be deployed to. The Machine Name should be set for each web server. If not set, custom pages will be deployed relative to the Relativity Web installation path.

• CustomPageDeploymentManagerSleepTime—the number of seconds the Custom Page Deployment Manager agent will wait for a new version to become available.

• EnableCustomPageReadinessCheck—when true, the Custom Page Deployment Manager will attempt to invoke an application's custom page readiness endpoint before routing requests to its web pages. The optional readiness endpoint can be configured by application developers to provide a way of performing start up tasks.

• MassOperationManagerThreadCount—the maximum number of threads for each Mass Operation Manager. If 0 or less, defaults to Agent server processor count * 2.

• MigrationMaxParallelFileCopyThreads—the maximum number of parallel threads ARM for Processing will use during the file repository copy operation.

• ScriptRunManagerMaxConcurrentThreads—determines the max amount of concurrent script run threads each agent can use, defaults to 10.

• If you have Server 2021 PDF installed you need to upgrade to the Server 2022 PDF release.
• Legacy PDF functionality is removed, you need to install the new PDF RAP file.
  • To ensure your PDF Mass operation permissions are migrated, install the Server 2021 PDF app before upgrading to Relativity Server 2022.
  • If installing PDF for the first time in Server 2022 without migrating permissions, only System Admins will have PDF Mass Operation permission by default.

Limitations:

• PDFs created from the viewer are named with a unique ID instead of the document control number.
• The options defined on the PDF profile cannot be modified from the mass operation or from the Viewer.
• If you install this application, the Save as PDF mass operation is not available in the related items pane in the Review Interface.
• To uninstall the new PDF application on Sever 2022, you must contact Relativity Support.
• You cannot use mass operations on Data Grid-enabled fields.
• PDF does not integrate with the password bank. If you try to convert a native document that is password protected, an error occurs.

Processing leverages OutsideIn as a new text extraction method for Excel, Word, and Powerpoint. OutsideIn does not utilize Microsoft Office APIs to extract text.