How do I upgrade BE2014 to BE2016?

[sstrong]

I currently have BE 14.1 1786.1093 running on WS2012R2. The database is on a separate SQL Server 2012 SE server.

Q1. How do I do an in-place upgrade on the WS2012R2 server to BE 16?

Q2: I'm currently using USB thumb drives which I daily rotate on BE 14. Will these still work after the upgrade to BE 16? In BE14 the USB disk media description is "(Disk Cartridge)" as a FLDR device.

Q3: When the USB disks were first added, they were setup with "Configure Disk", "Disk-based storage", then "Disk cartridge device". Is this still supported in BE 16?

[Gurvinder]

You can run the installer on the server where BE 2014 is installed and upgrade to BE 16. The configuration in BE 2014 is supported with BE 16
https://www.veritas.com/support/en_US/article.100038914 

[sstrong]

So, just so I'm clear, high level steps:

1. Run the BE 2014.1 console on the BE server and add the BE16 slf key to BE 14.1

2. Run the BE16 FP2 installer on the BE server to do an in-place upgrade to BE 16.

Things to note: This is BE 2014.1 (not BE 2015 as per the referenced document), and SQL Server is 2012 not SQL Server 2014/2016.

[Gurvinder]

Get the BE 16 licenses
Download BE 16
Start BE 16 Installation by clicking on Browser.exe in Installation Files
Then just go through the installation wizard and it will ask to put in the licenses and then just click next. Review each step and the upgrade should start and in the end after the upgrade completes it will probably ask for a reboot.
Note: Download BE 16 FP2 Installation files , then you dont have to apply the patch on top.
There will be one more update post FP2, so you can run the Live Update to get that as well.
Since this is an inplace upgrade, the configuration should remain intact. Make sure to update the remote agents if you are backing up remote servers

[Colin_Weaver]

For Q2 and Q3 Thuimb drives still work the same way - and differently from actual USB harddisks

Basically flash based thumb drives show up in the operating systemas removable media ( open My Computer and look at the sections the drives appear in to see this) and hence are handled in the same way as RDX cartridges (which means you may need to read documentation about RDX to understand the handling.)

USB Harddisks however seem to show up in the Operating System as Fixed Disks (for reasons that are between the OS vendors and the disk vendors) and are therefore handled slightly differently.

The handling for both types of disk has not changed since BE 2014 (it did work a little differently in BE 2012, and was completely different in BE 2010 R3 and earlier.