Upgrading Netbackup from 8.1.1 to 8.1.2
What are some of the things I should be aware of before upgrading current 8.1.1 environment to 8.1.2 ?
Forum Discussion
The biggest thing to be aware of is the new SmartMeter feature, other than that, it's a pretty standard and upgrade.
What OS are your master/media servers running?
We have Windows 2012 master servers, and 4 Veritas appliances.
Can I use a "Smart Meter key" for a test install before I implement into our production environment ?
If you have a test environment, I'd suggest upgrading that to 8.1.2 or 8.2 and get a feel for the Web UI (although still not very polished, it is where Veritas is heading eventually). This would also help you understand and see how SmartMeter works, you'll see the info required in the licensing section when you download the 8.1.2 and 8.2 binaries.
As for your OS of your master server, you won't have any issues with compatability.
With the new Smart Meter license, could I build a test 8.1.2 master server before deploying into production or do I need an additional license for this ?
If you have capacity based licensing then you can spin up as many masters and medias as you want, and your test environment is going to be so small as to not impact front-end license consumption in any meaningful way.
If you have traditional licensing, then I would expect that Veritas won't mind you spinning up one or two "DR test" ;) servers for just a few days - just don't keep them hanging around for too long - really, don't keep them hanging around.
