Hardware & Software Requirements

Components

On-Premise Deployment - Medium Solution

In addition to offering software as a service (Saas), Reveal supports customer cloud and on-premise installations. Cloud-based implementation facilitates high scalable access to Reveal’s AWS cloud infrastructure and services. On-prem (behind the firewall) implementation affords customers full control of the data infrastructure.

To assist in provisioning cloud or on-prem Reveal installations, the following are suggested minimum hardware requirements, and can grow with you as you scale.

Reveal Cloud AI (Optional)

• The Cloud AI system uses an S3 bucket for staging purposes. This is necessary as AWS services require data to be stored locally in S3 for analysis to be performed.

• Information about availability of AWS functions can be found here:
  https://docs.aws.amazon.com/general/latest/gr/aws-service-information.html

• Browse to the desired service and check the API availability in your target region. Below is a list of the services we use:
  https://docs.aws.amazon.com/general/latest/gr/rekognition.html https://docs.aws.amazon.com/general/latest/gr/comprehend.html https://docs.aws.amazon.com/general/latest/gr/transcribe.html https://docs.aws.amazon.com/general/latest/gr/translate-service.html https://docs.aws.amazon.com/general/latest/gr/s3.html https://docs.aws.amazon.com/general/latest/gr/ec2-service.html

Frequently Asked Questions

1. Question: Are these the only options available?

   Answer: No, not at all. The architectures described in this document illustrate minimum guidelines for likely deployment scenarios, but discussions with Reveal technicians for what-if scenarios are definitely encouraged as every organization's eDiscovery needs will vary greatly based on document complexity, number of graphics versus text in various documents, and the desired workflow within your eDiscovery operations.

2. Question: Can Virtual or Physical system be used?

   Answer: Yes, but since eDiscovery needs rarely involve static usage, deployment onto Virtual Infrastructure is strongly recommended both for short-term spikes as well as ongoing growth of usage.

3. Question: Some scenarios list throughput estimates, are those guaranteed results?

   Answer: Unfortunately, no. While those estimates are derived based on real-world usage of the Reveal-Brainspace solutions, numerous factors exist (document complexity, storage speed, etc.) which will impact overall throughput. Also, timeframe expectations vary between organizations. In most scenarios, throughput can be increased with either more robust systems or greater quantities of some components. Please feel free to discuss possible areas to improve throughput for certain activities with Reveal-Brainspace technicians during initial planning or deployment as well as over the long-run.

4. Question: Is Microsoft Outlook required on each Reveal Processing Agent?

   Answer: Yes, as of now, this is a technical requirement.

5. Question: Is Microsoft Office required on each Reveal Processing Discovery Manager system?

   Answer: No, this is not a technical requirement, but many users find that having MSOffice installed on these systems can assist with QC and troubleshooting activities.

6. Question: Do all components involved with the Reveal solution have to remain online 24x7?

   Answer: No, in many scenarios, idle systems can be taken offline when not actively in use. An example of this would include Processing Agents when no Processing is actively being performed.

7. Question: Is Elasticsearch only used for Review searching?

   Answer: No, the Reveal Review product stores the actual text from documents in Elasticsearch. Elasticsearch needs to be online for almost all Reviewing activities.

8. Question: What integrations exist between the Reveal products?

   Answer: Reveal Processing can directly export to Reveal Review although the "Uploader" feature in the Reveal Review web front-end is only available currently in the Reveal SaaS offering.

9. Question: Both the Processing Agent and the Elasticsearch components stress the use of high-speed storage. Is this required?

   Answer: No, but it is strongly recommended. Both of these components are very I/O intensive, so having local, high-speed storage can greatly reduce the duration of many activities.

10. Question: Some of the resource requirements are significant; can we start smaller than what is listed and expand later as activity increases?

    Answer: Yes, but keep in mind that adjustments in allocated resources may not be deemed necessary until in-progress activities are underway, often with a pending deadline, and adjustments to some resources (typically CPU and Memory) may require an outage which can be difficult to schedule if large batch jobs are executing. The minimum resource allocations described in this document target eventual usage scenarios, but feel free to start smaller, and adjust upward when necessary, always keeping a close eye on resource consumption and live throughput.

11. Question: The documented Reveal solution appears to be heavily reliant upon Microsoft products; is this a requirement?

    Answer: Yes. While some components such as Elasticsearch and the SMB Network Share can be deployed on other Operating Systems, the basis of the Reveal solution makes specific use of functionality within the Microsoft stack: IIS, MSSQL and .NET/C#.

12. Question: The documented Brainspace solution appears to be heavily reliant upon Linux operating systems; is this a requirement?

    Answer: Yes. The Brainspace solution is deployed solely on Linux systems.

13. Question: Can SAN or NAS storage technologies be utilized in the solution?

    Answer: Yes, these are very common. Just keep in mind that during high-load scenarios (Importing, Indexing, Production, etc.), the speed of storage will be a critical factor in the duration of those activities.

14. Question: Why are so many Reveal Processing Agents recommended?

    Answer: Currently, the Reveal Processing Agent software can perform various tasks, but not at the same time. Multiple Processing Agents help ensure that no activities will be queued waiting for another activity to complete.

15. Question: Storage requirements for MSSQL system are high, is this required?

    Answer: Best Practices are to utilize full-recovery model in the MSSQL environment. Storage allocations can be trimmed slightly if using simple-recovery model.

16. Question: Do the Discovery Manager and Review Manager thick clients have to reside on their own systems?

    Answer: No. Typically, customers will deploy Discovery Manager on its own System, with Review Manager either being deployed on the same system as Discovery Manager or one of the Review Application Servers.

17. Question: How should backups be configured for Reveal Solutions?

    Answer: Best Practices leverage differing backup strategies for each functional area. For example, SQL data should be in Full-Recovery mode and leverage Native SQL backups, while Elasticsearch should leverage built in backup/restore functionality through Curator. Brainspace, file servers, and virtual machines would leverage a form of Virtualization aware backup products.

18. Question: How many external IP addresses are necessary if we need external reviewers?

    Answer: If using a proxy or load balancer one IP would be necessary. However, Additional IP addresses may be necessary for multiple web servers or publishing multiple services such as Review, Brainspace, and keycloak authentication services.