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· 6 min read

This article covers what's new our latest Quarterly release series from December 2023 to February 2024. Read the release notes here.

Comet 24.2.0 Mimas

We're very pleased to announce our latest Quarterly release series - Comet 24.2 Mimas. This is the the latest entry in our quarterly rollup series, that branches off from our main rolling Voyager development into a fixed target for you to qualify and build your service offering upon.

Mimas is named after a moon of Saturn, which in turn takes its name from an ancient Greek mythological giant. Mimas is relatively small compared to Earth's moon, with a diameter of about 396 kilometers (246 miles). Its composition is primarily made up of water ice with a small amount of rocky material. Its most distinguishing feature is a giant impact crater which stretches a third of the way across the face of the moon, making it look like the Death Star from "Star Wars."

For users coming from the previous 23.11 Saturn quarterly release series, Mimas adds 3 features and 15 enhancements, including Dark Mode for the Comet Server web interface and a Debian installer for the Comet Backup desktop app as mentioned below.

The full set of changes can be found in the release notes.

Webinar announcement

If you'd prefer to watch rather than read, we're hosting a webinar to discuss this new quarterly release and all the new changes. Please register before we go live on Tuesday 12 March (4pm ET / 1pm PT) to catch up on all the latest Comet news with Comet's CTO, Mason - and as usual, there will be time for a live question-and-answer session at the end of the presentation.

As well as that, we have many more videos available on our YouTube channel, including guides on getting started with Comet, individual features, demonstrations with our technology partners, and webinars for previous quarterly software releases.

Dark Mode for the Comet Server

To continue our visual improvements to the Comet Server web interface we have added Dark Mode support. This completely overhauls the look and feel of the Comet Server and automatically applies based on the theme you have chosen for your system. Next time you have a chance check it out by logging into your Comet Server and clicking the new toggle button in the top right corner.

Light Mode:

Dark Mode:

Debian Installer for the Comet Backup desktop app

To make it easier to install Comet on your Debian Linux installs, we are pleased to announce our new Debian Installer. Our new installer will walk you through all of the required steps to install Comet. Comet is installed as a systemd service meaning it will now automatically start when your device boots.

Once installed you can still upgrade Comet remotely using the Comet Server web interface meaning you now have multiple options for managing, installing and upgrading Comet on your Linux devices.

Improved S3-compatible Object Lock Performance

Object Lock is a great way to add additional security to your data stored in an S3-compatible Storage Vault. This month we've been hard at work finding ways to optimize Comet's performance when backing up to an S3-compatible Storage Vaults. We have found a way to significantly decrease the time taken to extend the object lock duration on objects stored in the vault. As a result, backup jobs to an S3-compatible Storage Vault now complete up to 16 times faster than before.

Custom Headers added for Custom Remote Buckets

Comet has a great list of S3-compatible storage providers that we have storage templates for. To add better support for other S3-compatible storage providers you can now add Customer Headers to a Custom Remote Bucket in the Comet Server web interface. This greatly expands your options for which provider you would like to use as you can now add additional data such as long lived authentication tokens as part of the request Comet makes when connecting to the storage provider.

Faster Logins between the Comet Account Portal and Comet Hosted

Once Comet Hosted is running our new 24.2.0 Mimas release, we will enable the overhauled login button for Comet Hosted servers from the Comet Account Portal.

The new login button shares credentials between the Comet Account Portal and Comet Hosted meaning you no longer need to remember two sets of passwords. Because of this we have been able to solve all of the failing cases and can provide you with a reliable login experience for your Comet Hosted servers.

Once you've logged in with the new system for the first time, when you log out of your Comet Hosted Server you will see a new Login with Comet Account Portal appear on the login page. This allows you to jump straight back into your Comet Hosted server faster than ever before. This button will only appear on web browser sessions that remember you've clicked the login button from the Comet Account Portal first to ensure we don't show Comet branding to unexpected users of your Comet Hosted Servers.

VM Pricing Adjustments

At Comet, we are committed to continuously improving our products and services to meet your evolving data protection needs. In order to do this, occasionally we find it necessary to make adjustments to our product offerings. We are updating our pricing structure in order to further standardize our virtual machine protected item types – VMware and Hyper-V.

Effective February 28th 2024, we are introducing a new unlimited guest license option for VMware, priced at $39. If you have 8 or more VMware guests backing up, you will automatically get the unlimited pricing; no action needed on your part. This change supports your business growth as you scale and add VM deployments.

Also as of February 28th 2024, we are dropping the $2 base charge for Hyper-V. You will only pay the booster charge for all virtual environment backups (both VMware and Hyper-V) going forward.

To bring our virtual machine licensing into alignment, starting February 28th 2024, Hyper-V licensing will be charged at $3 per guest or $24 for unlimited guests per host.

· 6 min read

We sat down for a chat with Jackson Day, one of our Software Developers who has been with the company since May 2022. This piece has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

What is your role at Comet?

I am a software developer on one of Comet’s two development teams. I came up through the junior developer program and have been at Comet for almost two years.

How did you decide you wanted to get into software development?

I've always had an interest in technology, but in high school there weren’t a lot of avenues to learn programming or something in that arena.

So I did a music degree after high school; music degrees aren't the greatest for finding a job. While I was working as a receptionist at a physiotherapist clinic, I did a few free programming courses. I decided it was fun and completed a bachelor’s degree in IT.

What do you love about working at Comet?

There’s millions of reasons, including awesome work colleagues. Comet is an awesome environment to learn and grow my skills in, and is a cool product to work on. I absolutely love it here.

The flexibility is really nice too. It’s awesome being able to work from home a couple days a week; and being able to set my own hours, starting early so I can finish early. I very much enjoy the balance.

How would you describe the team culture at Comet?

Super friendly and super supportive. When you're going through the junior developer role you have a mentor developer and mine, Ben Frengley, has answered a billion questions for me. I sat right next to Ben, so was able to ask questions easily. It's great to have a dedicated person you can go to, especially while you are learning and before you know everyone’s area of expertise. And everyone else is still happy to help you out as well.

You're the second person to complete the junior dev/support to developer pathway. What was it like working for support before becoming a full time developer?

It's definitely a good setup. The idea of going from study to jumping straight into a developer role was actually kind of daunting. Having that year to work on some projects while you're going through the junior dev pathway, then through support, learning how to work with customers, and getting a good understanding of how the Comet software works was really helpful.

How did the role work with splitting between support tickets and developer projects?

Earlier on the role it was mainly working on the support team and understanding what the product is and how it works. I had a development project to work on pretty early because of my study. When support is less busy, you can then work on some developer tickets.

Any tips from working in support when you were a junior dev?

Just to really get stuck into what you’re working on. If you're on a tricky problem try to work it out. But if you're banging your head against the wall for too long, ask for help. You’ll find yourself asking lots of questions and know that it’s okay to ask questions.

What did you like best about the junior dev pathway?

The thing I like best about it is that it eases you into the development role. I feel like you're a lot better equipped for it than if you were just chucked right into the deep end. You get a really good understanding of how the product is used and the use cases for it, which is really helpful.

What advice would you give to someone who wants to become a developer?

When I was looking for jobs, it was a little daunting as I didn't have much of a portfolio because I was working full time and studying. I would say if you have the time, build up a  portfolio and direct it towards some of your interests. I think that would go a long way in the job hunting process. And if you're building up a portfolio you're also giving yourself more experience at the same time.

What do you like best about your role as a developer?

I love the constant learning and constant challenge. Sometimes the challenge can be tricky, but when you finish a project it’s really rewarding. You constantly feel your knowledge growing, which is cool.

What keeps you interested and inspired moving forward in the field?

For me, it’s seeing how incredible some of our developers are at their jobs. Sometimes I’ll ask someone a question and just watch them power through with so much knowledge. So for me, it’s growing towards that goal of being really knowledgeable.

Do you have any favorite projects that you've worked on?

Emoji support in the tickets – very important. It was a hackathon project.

Tell us more about hackathons at Comet.

For hackathons we have four or five days where we get to work on something in Comet that we just feel like working on, which is really cool to have a bit of freedom there. Then at the end of the week it’s cool to see what everyone built.

Some of the projects that people work on during hackathons do make it into the software, and sometimes they don't because they're more R&D or exploratory projects.

What’s your top backup tip?

Test your recovery process. People like to treat backup as ‘set and go’ and while we do our best here at Comet to make that possible as much as we can, it is important to test your restores and make sure the recovery process works as it should.

What are some of your hobbies?

Outside of work I like to tinker, I love to try new things. This year I've been making an effort to spend at least an hour at the end of each day on some kind of hobby. I've been learning to do some 3D modelling. Then practicing my trombone, working on music composition, trying to do a bit of game development. And then I also just enjoy going for a nice stroll.

You are originally from Christchurch, what do you like about living in Christchurch?

Christchurch is in a great location, there’s a bit of everything close by. You can easily get to the ocean and the mountains, and there’s lots of activities. The city also has good vibes, not too hectic.

We know everyone at Comet loves food. What are some of your favorite (vegan) restaurants?

My top three choices would have to be: Grater Goods Deli, Portershed for breakfast, and there’s Bonobo Cafe in Sumner.

· 2 min read

"What's New?" is a series of blog posts covering recent changes to Comet in more detail. This article covers the latest changes in Comet Voyager between December 2023 and January 2024.

There were nine Comet software releases between December 2023 and January 2024 - five in our 23.12.x Voyager release series and four point releases for our 23.12.x Saturn quarterly series.

Over the past nine releases we have released close to 20 bug fixes based on your feedback and our own internal quality standards. We are proud of the hard work the team has put in to make our latest versions of Saturn and Voyager our best releases yet.

Easier user creation in the Comet Server web interface

We've enhanced the way admins can create new users from the Comet Server web interface by allowing users to be created in any tenant. Previously this functionality was only available using the Comet Server API so it is great to be able to provide this functionality for all users.

It is also easier to add multiple users at once in the Comet Server as we've made the add multiple users workflow always visible. Previously this was hidden behind our advanced options settings system which made it harder to discover.

Tenant Visibility on the Users Page

On Comet Servers with more than one tenant configured, it was hard to see what user belonged to what tenant from the Users page. You could see that the user belonged to a tenant, but you could not tell which one.

Now on the users page you can see what tenant a user belongs to right from the page. This is a massive quality of life improvement for admin users.

Along with this improvement we have also made it possible to search for users by tenant name.

VMware Improvements

In November we launched our VMware Protected Item and over the past two months we've been hard at work to improve it based on your feedback, including improved performance, compatibility, and correctness.

The latest versions of Saturn and Voyager are up to date with our latest improvements and we've seen great uptake of the new feature.

Java SDK

You can now natively integrate with a Comet Server from a Java application with our new SDK. You can check it out at our public GitHub here.

· 6 min read

We sat down for a chat with Peter Ashford, one of our Senior Software Engineers and remote team members, who has been with the company since July 2022. This piece has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

How did your passion for tech start?

When I was a kid, computers seemed like these really serious business things. It always tickled my imagination that people would subvert computers to make trivial things like games. That really appealed to me. One of my childhood goals was to create games, and I did eventually work in the gaming industry for a few years; I worked with some truly excellent people and I had a lot of fun but I also came to realise that it's a difficult industry to have a long career in.

What attracted you to work here at Comet?

I told the recruiter I was working with that I was looking to find my tribe – people who were interested in technology and motivated and excited about software engineering.

I have definitely found the right place. I couldn't be happier with the kind of people that I'm working with, not just the software developers, but the whole company exceeded my expectations for working together collaboratively.

What is your favorite thing about working at Comet?

The people are the greatest thing about working at Comet. I genuinely like everybody that I work with. And there's nobody here I don't feel comfortable talking to and asking a question.

That's a big deal because we’re working on a complex product. So having an environment where everybody feels comfortable and free to ask questions is a big deal. Comet is an extremely collegial kind of place to work. Everyone is genuinely interested in helping everybody else out.

You are one of the full time remote team members, how do you keep connected with the team?

I live in Dunedin, so I’m one of a handful of remote team members at Comet. I knew that being remote full time was going to be a different kind of challenge. But Comet has been really proactive with that right from the outset.

We have events like CometCon, our company-wide conference, where twice a year everyone is flown in for a week to ensure we get some face to face time as an entire team.

The other thing that Comet does, which is really cool, is that we have a virtual coffee break over Slack where we just get together and chat on a video call. All of our team meetings happen over Slack as well, so our normal way of working effectively works for people who work remotely.

Inevitably there's always going to be the occasional discussions you miss out on because you're not in the office, but there's lots of opportunities to catch up with people outside of physically having to be in the office. So it works out pretty well.

Tell us more about CometCon and what you enjoy about it.

CometCon is a fantastic initiative. They’re awesome and I hugely value them for two reasons:

One, sitting down and getting a chance to hash through issues or hear talks about how things work on the technical side is really valuable. Comet is a big and complex piece of software, so it's always great to learn more about how things work and have cross functional training in different areas of the product to disseminate knowledge throughout the team.

But also for me, because I'm working remotely, that chance to catch up with everybody and just have a bit of fun and focus on those sort of human relationships. I can't overstate how much I value that in terms of having time to catch up and chat to people in other departments.

What do you think of Christchurch?

I’m super enthusiastic about the Riverside Market, it’s a fantastic jewel in the crown for the city. There are a lot of eateries with different options, I’ve made a habit of eating there every time I travel to Christchurch for CometCon. I also love seeing the Southern Alps in the distance on a clear day, it gives you an emotional boost to see the mountains from the office windows.

What keeps you passionate about moving forward in the field and what keeps you inspired within the industry?

I really like the fact that I can learn new skills. I really value that. It's important for people who want to stay in the industry to keep learning. That's been great for me because I've picked up Golang programming, which I didn't know at all before working at Comet. I really like coding and making stuff and learning new ways to make stuff, that’s where it gets to be fun. That’s the joy of software engineering.

You’ve also had the opportunity to mentor one of the junior developers, what has that experience entailed?

During my interview process, we discussed various ways I could contribute to the team and the idea of mentorship came up. I absolutely love working with people and talking about code, so mentoring a junior dev is an awesome fit for me.

Each person approaches problem solving differently. It’s cool to see what someone else comes up with. I love the whole process of imparting knowledge and discussing various ways to solve a problem.

When Rhane (Junior Developer) came on board last year, I was paired up to mentor her. At Comet we have a pathway for junior developers to join our Support Team. They work on dev tickets between support tickets. With guidance from other team members, they graduate into a full developer after a year. It’s been a fantastic initiative.

What are some of your other hobbies?

I'm very much a family man. I've got a bunch of kids. We are currently doing tons of work in our garden. Because I'm working at home, I'm quite careful about making sure that I take breaks. So it's really nice to have a space in my backyard to wander around my garden and see what's growing and how it changes over the years. It has become quite a nice little zen environment to spend some time sitting in the sun, listening to birds.

· 3 min read

Another year has flown by. Thank you to all our partners for your support over the year and our best wishes for 2024.

At Comet, we've had a busy year full of new product features, fixes and enhancements, new marketing initiatives, support, onboarding, sales, and company conferences. During this holiday season at the end of the year and the start of the next, let's take a short look back at some of the big Comet news from 2023.

New feature highlights in 2023

In October, Comet added support for backing up VMware virtual machines. Our new Protected Item type was a major highlight of the year. It supports both single ESXi hosts and vSphere clusters, and uses Changed Block Tracking for excellent performance - on both paid and free ESXi licenses. All VMs are compressed and deduplicated inside Comet's Storage Vault system. Comet supports granular restore of individual files from within the VM, and also physical to virtual (P2V) migration from Disk Image backups into VMware format.

This big feature release deserved a big new planet, and we bumped our version codename to 23.11.0 Saturn after many versions spent in Jupiter's moons.

In November we also took the wraps off our Comet Storage product. We now offer an integrated, S3-compatible cloud storage solution, with great performance and with datacenters in multiple regions around the globe. This service is powered by our friends at Wasabi Cloud Storage, and we pass on Wasabi's own list pricing with no additional markup, giving you the convenience of a single bill.

Object Lock is an S3 feature for immutable storage. This provides a layer of defense against ransomware attacks, by preventing leaked credentials from damaging the backup storage location. In 2023 Comet gained support for using Object Lock on some S3-compatible destinations including AWS S3, Wasabi Cloud Storage, and Comet Storage, alongside our pre-existing support for immutable storage on Backblaze B2.

Over the course of the year, we also undertook a major project to refresh and modernize many parts of our user interface. Starting with the Comet Server web interface in April, we continued to update the Comet Backup desktop app in August, and the Comet Account Portal in November. The new designs look great, are easier to use, and should serve us well for many years to come.

We've had many more successful features over the course of the year, such as WebDAV support; single-sign-on with OIDC; improvements to Audit Logging; our official Docker container; new Recent Activity email reports; granular restore for Hyper-V; a new system for live-connected devices; Azure Key Vault integration; and many performance improvements.

Looking forwards into 2024

As always, please take a look at our Feature Voting page and raise your ideas, or upvote any existing ideas. We look at this system often to help prioritize our development.

We're keeping our plans under wraps for the moment - but as always, you can expect to see many of your requests ticked off this list!

· 2 min read

Comet partners with AreteK for distribution in Italy

Christchurch / Rome – December 22, 2023 – AreteK has partnered with Comet Backup to provide fast, secure backup to the Channel and IT teams in Italy.

“We are excited to be partnering with AreteK,” said Josh Flores, Comet’s General Manager. “This brings our solution to a regional distributor who Italian customers already know and trust.”

Comet Backup:

  • Offers an all-in-one platform to centralize your backup strategy for endpoints, servers, virtual environments, Microsoft Office 365, files and folders.
  • Offers a secure, encrypted backup solution that allows you to back up to your choice of either local or cloud storage destinations.
  • Integrates with technologies and storage providers such as: Amazon AWS, Google Cloud Storage, Microsoft Azure, Backblaze B2, Wasabi, Let's Encrypt, OpenStack and more.
  • Is available in Italian and 12 other languages and is used in more than 120 countries
  • Can be rebranded and personalized with your company name and logo

AreteK has chosen to distribute Comet Backup with the aim to expand the range of products dedicated to backup services, and in particular to satisfy the market needs of managed service providers (MSPs).

About Comet Backup

Comet provides fast, secure backup software for IT professionals and businesses worldwide, localizing to 13 languages. It enables organizations to secure their data, deliver business continuity and disaster preparedness. Trusted by customers across 120 countries, Comet has been recognized as a momentum leader by G2 and awarded “Best Software” and “Most Affordable” by Software Suggest. Founded by the same team who built MyClient and Nexus (now a J2 Global company), Comet is a privately held company based in Christchurch, New Zealand.

Follow and connect with Comet: www.cometbackup.com | LinkedIn | Facebook | YouTube | X

Comet PR Contact press@cometbackup.com

About AreteK

AreteK is a company founded in 2015 and headquartered in Rome with the aim of identifying and promoting IT solutions suitable for SMEs. Our name, AreteK, is inspired by the Greek word aretè, which originally meant the ability of any thing, animal or person to perform its task well: we at Aretek operate every day trying to perform our tasks to the best of our ability and with the modus operandi necessary to respond with excellence to the IT needs of SMEs.

Follow and connect with AreteK: www.aretek.it | LinkedIn | Facebook | YouTube | X

· One min read

Holidaze - 10 Days of Giveaways and Prizes

Join us in celebrating the holiday season! We’ve partnered with Channel Program as one of the sponsors for their Holidaze giveaway event.

For 10 business days, from Dec 4th – Dec 15th 2023, you can win prizes like gift cards, travel vouchers, tech gadgets, and more!

Channel Program will draw 2 prizes each day, with 3 grand prizes announced on the final day, December 15th, to help you kick off this holiday season.

Comet is giving away a PlayStation 5 to one lucky winner as one of the Grand Prizes.

Register today to enter the daily prize drawings starting on December 4th!

· 6 min read

"What's New?" is a series of blog posts covering recent changes to Comet in more detail. This article covers the latest changes in Comet Voyager over November 2023.

There were seven Comet software releases during November - four in our 23.9.x Voyager release series, two point releases for our 23.8.x Adrastea quarterly series, and the official launch of our latest 23.11.0 Saturn quarterly release.

VMware ESXi Free edition support

Last month, we launched our newest Protected Item type to add support for backing up VMware virtual machines using Comet. Over the last month of Voyager series releases, we've seen great uptake of the new feature and have been working to improve it based on your feedback, including improved performance, compatibility, and correctness.

The VMware vSphere hypervisor platform encompasses both the ESXi hypervisor as well as the vCenter centralized management application. ESXi is available in multiple licensed editions, including a free license with various limitations such as restrictions on the number of virtual CPUs that can be assigned to a given virtual machine.

In our first release, Comet supported ESXi versions with a paid license ("vSphere Essentials" or higher), but in the latest Comet 23.9.11 we took a closer look at the problem, and have extended our compatibility to include support for the free version of VMware ESXi. Our implementation supports the same versions (6.7, 7.x, 8.x) of ESXi and is built solely using VMware's officially supported vSphere VADP backup APIs, including Changed Block Tracking (CBT) support. No configuration changes are required to your free-license ESXi host server to support this backup mode.

Improved restores

As part of working on virtual machine features this month, we put a particular focus on the granular restore option. The existing granular restore mode in Comet allows you to take a virtual disk backup at the block level - either of VMware, Hyper-V, or of a physical Disk Image - and then restore individual files and folders from the interior NTFS filesystem.

Our granular restore feature gives competitive restore performance and offers flexible interactive browsing, all while supporting multiple disk image and partition formats, using Comet's encrypted deduplicated cloud storage.

This month, we've made granular restore even faster and have reduced its memory and network traffic requirements, by using an intelligent caching system that helps Comet traverse the virtual NTFS file table in a more efficient way. We have streamlined the restore and browsing workflows to reduce edge cases, improving support for virtual machines with multiple disks, disk images in subdirectories, disk images that span multiple files, and other such cases. In addition, Comet is now able to display each partition's name in more cases.

Outside of granular restore, we've also optimized our ordinary file restore further by removing bottlenecks that could stop Comet from effectively multithreading. In the latest versions of Comet, it should be much faster to restore very deep directory trees.

Comet Server security and policies

Comet Server has an extensive permission system for administrators, tenant administrators, and end users. Comet recently added support to allow a top-level administrator to restrict a tenant administrator into using certain policies. However, as this restriction was not transitive, the tenant administrator could still allow a tenant end-user to bypass those policy restrictions. The latest version of Comet adds a new ability to enforce settings and preferences across an entire Comet Server.

Without careful consideration, adding features can sometimes result in a cluttered user interface. As Comet Server has grown to offer more and more control over user permission levels, we have split out the administrator permission settings onto a separate tab.

The web interface and API for Comet Server make use of a built-in web server, based on the standard library from the Go programming language. This embedded web server is secure, performant and powerful, and includes many recent features such as TLS 1.3 and HTTP/2. As this is a bundled component, any security updates for this component must be delivered as part of a Comet Server update. Recently, the HTTP/2 Rapid Reset Attack (CVE-2023-44487) made headlines around the world, affecting major corporations including Google and Cloudflare. This month, we were able to take advantage of newly available mitigations to resolve the issue directly within Comet Server.

We've also implemented additional security protections against XSS attacks, as a defense in depth measure. The Comet Server web interface now uses an extremely strict Content Security Policy (CSP) to help prevent any remote attacks on your administrator login session.

CometCon

We've kept the CometCon tradition going, bringing remote and local Comet team members together for another week-long conference.

During the week, we made it a priority to focus on deep technical brainstorming and planning, with speakers from various departments. But it wasn't all work - the collaborative environment was combined with social events including decorating the office, renting out a cinema, learning to mix cocktails, taking a flight lesson, and the infamous "Mandatory Fun".

Comet 23.11.0 Saturn

We're very pleased to announce our latest Quarterly release series - Comet 23.11 Saturn.

Our product's first codename started many years ago with the planets of the inner solar system, and our Voyager track continues ever more outward into distance parts of space. Recently, all our quarterly releases have been named after moons of Jupiter. But with the recent addition of VMware support this quarter, we thought that adding a big new feature deserved a big new planet!

Saturn needs no introduction as the sixth planet from the Sun. It is the second-largest planet in our solar system after Jupiter, large enough to fit the Earth inside more than 760 times over. Its iconic rings were discovered in 1610, and we are continuing to find additional moons - over 140 have been discovered, most recently in 2020.

Comet 23.11.0 Saturn includes 8 new features and 23 enhancements that were developed over the course of the previous 23.9.x Voyager series, including our VMware Protected Item type, a lobby for silent installed devices, and improvements for Object Lock and Comet Storage.

The full list of improvements is available in the official Release Notes. If you'd prefer to listen rather than read, we're hosting a webinar next week to discuss this new quarterly release and all the new changes. Please register for a notification before we go live on December 6th (5pm EDT / 2pm PDT) to catch up on all the latest Comet news with us - and as usual, there will be time for a live question-and-answer session at the end of the presentation.

Hyper-V Backup 2.0 Announcement

We are currently working towards releasing our new Hyper-V Backup 2.0 offering next year, which means we’ll be retiring our existing Hyper-V backup at the same time. To prepare for this, we’ll preview new technology in Comet’s Voyager releases and add further capabilities to Hyper-V backup as we work towards the launch of Hyper-V Backup 2.0 in 2024!

· 4 min read

Comet Backup Offers All-In-One Backup Solution for Businesses and IT Providers with Integrated Cloud Storage Powered by Wasabi

CHRISTCHURCH / BOSTON – November 1, 2023 – Comet Backup, announced an expansion of their long-standing partnership with Wasabi Technologies today. This partnership fully integrates Wasabi’s cloud storage offering into Comet Backup’s software allowing IT providers and IT teams an easy all-in-one backup solution.

Comet Backup empowers IT professionals to manage backup data for all of their clients through a single interface, complete with built-in monitoring and reporting features. By integrating Wasabi hot cloud storage into Comet Backup’s platform, IT providers now have a convenient all-in-one solution for backup and cloud storage. At 80% less than the cost of Amazon S3 with no fees for data egress or API requests and no vendor lock-in, Wasabi provides a scalable, long-term cloud storage option at an affordable price.

“The IT industry is seeing an increased demand for fast, easy-to-use solutions to protect business-critical data. With organizations facing growing security threats, it is vital for companies to have systems in place to ensure business continuity,” said Josh Flores, General Manager of Comet Backup. “We equip IT teams with the tools they need to deliver simple, affordable data protection. We’re excited to partner with Wasabi to allow our customers to centralize their backup strategy and streamline their workflows. The flexibility and cost-savings Wasabi offer make them the perfect partner for this solution.”

By offering Comet Storage powered by Wasabi, IT teams no longer need to set up a separate storage account, or manage multiple vendors. Comet users will pay a single bill for both backup and storage, at the same low price as buying storage directly from Wasabi. With a unified backup and cloud storage solution, companies can spend less time managing their technology stack, and instead focus on their customers, their core competencies, and their bottom line.

“Comet Storage powered by Wasabi is now making it easier than ever for managed service providers and IT professionals to leverage the cloud through a single billing, monitoring and reporting interface. Wasabi is excited to be integrated into this solution,” said Laurie Mitchell, Wasabi Technologies SVP Global Marketing. “The result is a cohesive backup and storage solution that’s perfect for MSPs and IT teams to keep things simple and cost effective.”

For more information on Comet Backup and Wasabi, please visit our dedicated landing page.  

About Comet Backup

Comet provides fast, secure backup software for IT professionals and businesses worldwide, localizing to 13 languages. It enables organizations to secure their data, deliver business continuity and disaster preparedness. Trusted by customers across 120 countries, Comet has been recognized as a momentum leader by G2 and awarded “Best Software” and “Most Affordable” by Software Suggest. Founded by the same team who built MyClient and Nexus (now a J2 Global company), Comet is a privately held company based in Christchurch, New Zealand.

Follow and connect with Comet: www.cometbackup.com | LinkedIn | Facebook | YouTube | X

Comet PR contact

press@cometbackup.com

About Wasabi Technologies

Wasabi provides simple and affordable hot cloud storage for businesses all over the world. It enables organizations to store and instantly access an unlimited amount of data with no complex tiers or egress or API fees, delivering predictable costs that save money and industry leading security and performance businesses can count on. Trusted by customers worldwide, Wasabi has been recognized as one of technology’s fastest-growing and most visionary companies. Created by Carbonite co-founders and cloud storage pioneers David Friend and Jeff Flowers, Wasabi is a privately held company based in Boston. Wasabi is a Proud Partner of the Boston Red Sox, and the Official Cloud Storage Partner of Liverpool Football Club and the Boston Bruins.

Follow and connect with Wasabi on LinkedIn, X, Facebook, Instagram, and The Bucket.

Wasabi PR contact

press@wasabi.com

· 6 min read

"What's New?" is a series of blog posts covering recent changes to Comet in more detail. This article covers the latest changes in Comet Voyager over October 2023.

There were four Comet software releases during October, all in the 23.9.x Voyager release series.

VMware support

Comet 23.9.7 adds support for backing up VMware virtual machines.

This has been a long-standing request on our Feature Voting page. After running a successful beta program over the last few months, we're very happy to be able to deliver this feature to partners in our Voyager track.

Comet's new VMware Protected Item type allows you to easily connect to your ESXi or vCenter server. You can pick individual VMs for backup across all datacenters, or choose "All VMs" to ensure all VMs are backed up with targeted exclusions.

The feature supports Changed Block Tracking. After completing an initial backup job, any future backup jobs will coordinate with the VMware host server to identify which ranges of the disk have changed since the previous backup job. These changed ranges from the VMware server are adapted into content-defined boundaries for Comet's deduplicating chunking engine. This results in an extremely efficient, incremental-forever backup.

As this is a new Protected Item type, it must be configured to run from an installed device that will perform the compression and encryption workload. Installing Comet Backup on a VM within the VMware server itself is recommended for reduced end-to-end latency. In this first released version in Comet 23.9.7, this feature requires the device to be running Windows x86_64.

We are excited to bring this new Protected Item type to our entire Comet Community, so look out for our upcoming quarterly software release at the end of this month. We'd love your feedback and are here to help if you need any assistance getting started, reach out via our support ticket system.

Comet Storage powered by Wasabi

It's official - Comet Storage is a new cloud storage offering from Comet, in partnership with Wasabi. We offer Wasabi's same great S3-compatible service, at no additional cost above their public pricing. The feature is fully integrated and managed from within your account.cometbackup.com account, giving you unified billing and reporting across both cloud storage and your backup software licenses.

Comet Backup will continue to support a wide range of cloud storage providers. However, the new all-in-one Comet Storage offering is both highly convenient and excellent value. If you are interested in migrating to Comet Storage from an existing Wasabi account or from another cloud provider, please contact us for migration assistance.

Comet Storage also supports S3 Object Lock, allowing the backed-up data to be marked as immutable. This is a complete defense against ransomware attacking the backup storage location itself, giving you a fixed number of days to identify and mitigate the issue. In the latest version of Comet, we've also made Object Lock easier to use for all supported Object Lock-compatible providers, by simplifying the configuration options for both Storage Vaults and Storage Templates.

For more information, please see the documentation, or check out our latest YouTube video:

New account.cometbackup.com user interface design

The next time you log in to the account.cometbackup.com system, you'll see a brand new user interface.

Every element on the page has been given a fresh coat of paint - from buttons to popups, from paying your bill to raising a support ticket. We've also grouped some pages together in a more logical way, so you'll find it simpler to make your way around the site.

Inspired by the similar change to the Comet Server web interface earlier this year, the new design has moved the main navigation bar from the top to the left-hand side. This change brings our branding more closely in line across these two interfaces. On devices with smaller screens, such as laptops and tablets, you can click the small arrow button to collapse the navigation bar and regain horizontal screen real estate.

Virtual disk restore

Comet supports backing up physical Disk Images, Hyper-V virtual machines, and VMware virtual machines. All of these different Protected Item types result in virtual disk files. Comet supports granular restore for all three types, allowing you to browse through partitions and supported filesystems, to restore individual files from within a full disk backup.

In the latest versions of Comet, we've significantly improved the speed of granular restores from Disk Image backups. Some particular use-cases seeing a large improvement are granular restores involving a large number of directories, or a large quantity of small files. We're committed to continuing to improve Comet's performance and this work has identified more opportunities for improvement across all three types, so watch this space!

We've also added a feature to restore Disk Image backup jobs as VMware vSphere-compatible virtual disks.

Both Disk Image and our new VMware Protected Item type generate virtual *.vmdk files inside Comet's deduplicated Storage Vault. However, the subformat of the files does differ slightly. Until now, users who are using Comet to perform a physical-to-virtual (P2V) migration from a physical disk to a VMware virtual machine have been required to perform an extra file format conversion after the restore, requiring extra time and temporary disk space. With the new option in Comet to restore the disk in VMware vSphere-compatible file format, the conversion takes place dynamically as part of the restore job, simplifying the process and helping meet your recovery time objective (RTO).

Audit logging

Earlier this year, we added Audit Logging support to the self-hosted Comet Server product, to help our partners meet their compliance obligations. Since then, we've expanded the list of audit properties, and added a helpful option to configure this feature directly from the Comet Server web interface from the Settings page on the "License & Access" tab.

The new controls should make it much more accessible to configure Audit Logging support for your Comet Server.