What's new in the infrastructure
This page provides information on what's new in the Relativity infrastructure for 2024. For new features and enhancements for users and system admins, see What's new in Server 2024.
The following table lists key changes made to Relativity's infrastructure and should be considered when upgrading or installing Server 2023. Also included are changes introduced in the two other supported Server versions, Server 2022 and Server 2021.
Version | Feature | Upgrade consideration |
---|---|---|
Version | Feature | Upgrade consideration |
Server 2024 | Pre-upgrade cleanup |
Please complete the following checks prior to beginning your upgrade to Server 2024.
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. |
Server 2024 | Audit | Elasticsearch version 7.17 is the minimum required version for Data Grid Audit in Server 2024. Support for the Elasticsearch v8 series is planned for late 2024 in conjunction with the release of a new Relativity-Elasticsearch configuration tool. |
Server 2024 | Service Bus |
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. |
Server 2024 | Agents |
The following agents are new:
|
Server 2024 | Worker | Microsoft Office 2016 is still required to be installed on Worker Servers for Server 2024. Relativity intends to retroactively certify support for Office 2024 by Q2 2025. |
Server 2024 | Environment Watch | Relativity will release a new optional feature called Environment Watch in early 2025. Thie feature will provide Server customers with new telemetry insights, an enhanced in-app alerting experience, streamlined log searching, and dashboards to help customers monitor the health of their envirnoment. Environment Watch will require Elasticsearch and Kibana to be installed alongside Relativity Server 2024. More details about the feature and release date will be shared in the coming months. |
Server 2023 Patch 2 |
Extensibility Points | Non-temporary Relativity program files are no longer saved in Windows Temp folders. The automatic deletion of files from these folders (e.g. by anti-virus software or Microsoft Storage Sense) would occasionally cause Relativity product functionality issues. |
Server 2023 | Instance settings |
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. |
Server 2023 | SDK and NuGet packages |
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. |
Server 2023 | RSAPI | RSAPI has been removed in the Relativity Server 2023 release. See the RSAPI deprecation process topic in the Developer Guide for more information. |
Server 2023 | Classic Viewer | Classic Viewer has been removed in the Relativity Server 2023 release. Viewer extensions that only work with the Classic Viewer will no longer be functional. If you have not already done so, you will need to migrate your classic viewer extension code to the Review APIs. See Viewer Extension Migration Guide for more details. |
Server 2023 | .NET Framework | .NET Framework 4.8 and 4.8.1 are now supported. |
Server 2023 | SQL Server | SQL Server 2022 is now supported. |
Server 2023 | Windows Server | Windows Server 2022 is now supported. |
Server 2023 | Windows Server | Windows Server 2012 is no longer supported. |
Server 2023 | Service Bus | Service Bus for Windows Server is no longer a supported message broker option for Relativity service bus. RabbitMQ is the only supported message broker. |
Server 2023 | Service Bus |
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. |
Server 2023 | Legal Hold Preservation basic authentication deprecation | For Legal Hold, you are now required to use Modern Authentication, certificate based, for setting up Preservation Hold Settings. Basic Authentication, username and password, is no longer available for Preservation Hold Settings. |
Server 2023 | Workspace management | The new Workspace Delete agent and Workspace Housekeeping agent are responsible for deleting workspaces. The Case Manager agent is removed in Server 2023. |
Server 2022 | IIS |
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. |
Server 2022 | OCR | When you upgrade to Server 2022 from any previous version, any OCR sets you ran in that previous version will no longer display details such as counts of errored or completed documents. In addition, you are unable to retry the errors resulting from those OCR sets. We recommend that you re-run any OCR sets that are in an errored status after upgrade to Server 2022. |
Server 2022 | Scripts | The Delete Empty Case Folders script has been deprecated in Server 2022 and is no longer supported. |
Server 2022 | Conversion Cache Manager |
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:
See the Relativity.Conversion.Cache filter group in the instance settings descriptions topic for information on the settings for these agents. |
Server 2022 | Browser compatibility | Beginning in Server 2022, we now support Microsoft Edge. |
Server 2022 | Service Bus |
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. |
Server 2022 | Service Host Manager |
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. |
Server 2022 | Disaster recovery | There is a new version of the Disaster Recovery guide for Server 2022 available here on the Relativity Community. |
Server 2022 | Aero UI | The Aero UI is now present in your Server environment. For a list of the key changes introduced with this new UI, see Aero upgrade considerations. |
Server 2022 | Database schema | A number of database schema updates have been made since Server 2021 and you can find those on the Database schema updates table. |
Server 2022 | .NET 4.7.2 or 4.8 | Beginning in Server 2022, we now require .NET 4.7.2 or 4.8. For details, see Upgrading to .NET 4.7.2 or 4.8. |
Server 2022 | Internet Explorer support | Beginning in Server 2022, Relativity no longer supports Internet Explorer. This change is reflected in our Compatibility matrix. |
Server 2022 | Analytics server | We now recommend that you use Single Data Directory (SDD) mode only when installing the Analytics server for Server 2022. SDD mode provides for easier data management, a more seamless upgrade path, and fewer incidents for Relativity customers and Support to troubleshoot. For details, see Upgrading or installing your Analytics server. |
Server 2022 | Viewer | The Active X viewer has been deprecated. |
Server 2022 | Agents |
The following agents are new:
|
Server 2022 | Instance settings |
The following instance settings are new:
|
Server 2022 | Mass PDF |
Limitations:
|
Server 2022 | Processing/Invariant |
Processing leverages OutsideIn as a new text extraction method for Excel, Word, and Powerpoint. OutsideIn does not utilize Microsoft Office APIs to extract text. |