Planning upgrade from BE15 to 21
Disclaimer: My expertise is NetBackup with very limited BE experience.
A customer has asked for assistance with upgrade from version 15 to 21.
I am fine with all the requirements, such as compatibility check, download of software and license keys, etc.
I am still waiting for more info on existing OS versions and backup storage and if dedupe is used in the environment.
My question is more about the time needed for the upgrade?
Or is this how long is piece of string question?
Anybody who have already performed this specific upgrade - could you please share how long it took you?
And then remote agent upgrades - how much time needed per agent?
Can agent upgrades be performed in bulk?
Any kind of advise will be highly appreciated.
If dedup is used, then the upgrade process will take longer because there is a new version of dedup in BE 21.
You can push out the remote agents from the BE console. The agent upgrade process should not take long, but the remote server needs to reboot.
I haven't upgraded from 16 to 21, but I have done recent typical upgrades (15-->16, 20-->21 and the like). I once had to upgrade Backup Exec 2012 to Backup Exec 16: we found some serious errors in MS-SQL so we troubleshooted by looking at Microsoft SQL Installation logs (https://www.veritas.com/content/support/en_US/article.100012463) and fixed the issue with some powerscript scripts.
The proper upgrade (the setup.exe process) can take half an hour. Two things to consider:
- Reboots. The upgrade process will refuse to begin if there are reboots pending. After the upgrade you'll need yet another reboot. If the BE agents requiere reboot, you will be notified from the Admin Console.
- License files in SLF format for the proper version: this should be obvious but for some clients it is not. If you don't have the license files for the version being upgraded to, the associated function will be uninstalled during the upgrade.
