Upgrading Blackout

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Requirements

  • Important! - Blackout 5.0 supports only Server 2022 and Server 2023
    • Relativity Server 2024 support pending final Relativity Server 2024 release.
  • All browsers supported by Relativity Server 2022 and Server 2023
  • All existing Blackout jobs must be completed, reverted, or stopped prior to beginning the upgrade
  • Updates must be performed from the Relativity Application Library

Upgrading from 3.3 or earlier

Blackout 4 will be a major upgrade for Blackout and will introduce system changes upon upgrade. In addition to introducing new functionality, the upgrade will make changes to your existing installation and additional steps may need to be taken immediately after the upgrade.

If upgrading to Blackout 4+ from Blackout 3.3 or lower, please contact, support@milyli.com.

To learn more about specific changes, please refer to previous versions of this documentation and our release notes.

SQL version support

Note: Blackout 4.8 and above, requires SQL Server 2016 with compatibility mode set to at least 130. To check the compatibility mode level of your SQL Server, you can run the following query:

SELECT name, compatibility_level FROM sys.databases WHERE [name] = 'EDDS';

To update the compatibility mode level, please follow these steps:

  1. Connect to your SQL Server using SQL Server Management Studio.
  2. Right-click on the EDDS database and select Properties.
  3. In the Select a page pane, click Options.
  4. In the Compatibility level drop-down list, select the desired compatibility level.
  5. Click OK to save the changes.

Alternatively, the compatibility mode can be updated using the following SQL script:

ALTER DATABASE [EDDS] SET COMPATIBILITY_LEVEL = 130;

Upgrading from 3.4

If upgrading from Blackout 3.4, Blackout 4 introduces minimal changes to your system. There are no data migrations or schema changes between Blackout 3.4 and 4.

Before you begin

  • Ensure that you have received the Blackout 4 RAP file
    • If you have not received the RAP, please contact support@milyli.com
    • The file will be delivered via secure file share
  • Blackout must already be installed.
  • Blackout must be installed through the Relativity application library.
    • Ensure that you have access before beginning
    • Additionally, all workspaces must be upgraded at once using the prompt Relativity will display

Installation

  1. Navigate to the Application & Scripts | Application Library tab in the Relativity Admin section.
  2. Filter on application name for Blackout.
  3. Click on the application name.
  4. Click the Edit button.
  5. Click the Clear button.
  6. Click the Choose File button.
  7. Select the Blackout RAP and click the Open button.
  8. After the file uploads, click the Save button.
  9. You will be prompted to upgrade existing installations.
    • This action is required. Click 'Yes' to begin the upgrade.
  10. After Relativity has finished updating each workspace, verify that the install status is installed on each case before proceeding to the configuration section of this document.

Configuration

After each workspace has been successfully upgraded, Blackout will still need to be configured to work with at least one Blackout Relativity agent.

This section will guide you in setting up a single agent server to get started. Full details on configuring and setting up your agents for Blackout is covered in separate section, agent configuration.

  1. Navigate to the Blackout | Agent Configuration tab.
    • This will display a page that has all of the registered and available agent servers on the instance
  2. Identify the agent server that you wish to install the Blackout agent to.
  3. Select the ‘Enabled’ checkbox.
  4. Ensure that the ‘Is High Resource’ checkbox is enabled.
    • Blackout requires at least one agent server to be marked as high resource
    • High resource agent servers will, in addition to all other actions, also perform OCR and Native Spreadsheet markups
  5. Click the ‘Save Configurations’ button.

Agent Configuration Screen

This will then deploy the ‘Blackout Agent’ to that server and configure it with the default worker threads for that agent. The low priority worker count will be calculated as (# of CPU threads * 2) and the high priority worker count will be calculated as (# of CPU threads / 2) with a minimum of 1.

You can validate the status of the agent, confirm its installation, and view the default worker counts it was installed by:

  1. Navigate to the Server & Agent Management | Agents tab.
  2. Filter the application column to ‘Blackout’.
  3. The Enabled column will be set to ‘Yes’ and the Message column will read ‘Running (#:#)' where the first number represents the low priority workers and the second number represents the high priority workers.

Relativity Agents

After verification, Blackout will be ready to use.

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