I apologize in advance for my lack of knowledge.  We would like to switch from FMS 14 to FMS 16.  Version 14 resides on a VM and the hosted databases have container fields that use external links back to actual files stored on this VM.

Can we simply install FMS 16 on top of FMS 14 and by doing so preserve the external links to container information?  Also, where do the files corresponding to containers actually reside?  I know they are somewhere on the VM, but not sure where and whether they are easily recognizable based upon their names.  Again, my apologies for asking what many might consider basic questions.

You have to uninstall FMS14 before installing FMS16 and provided you configure it the same way (all the settings) then the files will be have exactly like they did before.

As to where the files actually reside; I'm assuming that you are talking about the Remote Container feature/  If so it really all depends on how you configured the container field and FMS.