Fixed an issue preventing individual files to be selected during the granular restore process on the Comet Backup desktop app
Fixed a cosmetic issue with translations not applying for some detailed error messages
About Version 2 Limited Version 2 Digital is one of the most dynamic IT companies in Asia. The company distributes a wide range of IT products across various areas including cyber security, cloud, data protection, end points, infrastructures, system monitoring, storage, networking, business productivity and communication products.
Through an extensive network of channels, point of sales, resellers, and partnership companies, Version 2 offers quality products and services which are highly acclaimed in the market. Its customers cover a wide spectrum which include Global 1000 enterprises, regional listed companies, different vertical industries, public utilities, Government, a vast number of successful SMEs, and consumers in various Asian cities.
About Comet We are a team of dedicated professionals committed to developing reliable and secure backup solutions for MSP’s, Businesses and IT professionals. With over 10 years of experience in the industry, we understand the importance of having a reliable backup solution in place to protect your valuable data. That’s why we’ve developed a comprehensive suite of backup solutions that are easy to use, scalable and highly secure.
Fixed an issue with Microsoft 365 listing that caused processing to fail when SharePoint Sites are locked
Fixed an issue with operating system information being incomplete for Windows devices
Fixed an issue causing certain Gradient PSA failures to retry for an unnecessarily long time
About Version 2 Limited Version 2 Digital is one of the most dynamic IT companies in Asia. The company distributes a wide range of IT products across various areas including cyber security, cloud, data protection, end points, infrastructures, system monitoring, storage, networking, business productivity and communication products.
Through an extensive network of channels, point of sales, resellers, and partnership companies, Version 2 offers quality products and services which are highly acclaimed in the market. Its customers cover a wide spectrum which include Global 1000 enterprises, regional listed companies, different vertical industries, public utilities, Government, a vast number of successful SMEs, and consumers in various Asian cities.
About Comet We are a team of dedicated professionals committed to developing reliable and secure backup solutions for MSP’s, Businesses and IT professionals. With over 10 years of experience in the industry, we understand the importance of having a reliable backup solution in place to protect your valuable data. That’s why we’ve developed a comprehensive suite of backup solutions that are easy to use, scalable and highly secure.
Added an automatic clean up of stale Storage Vault locks immediately when a device reboots, or wakes from sleep
Added support for custom prefix directories for IAM-compatible Storage Template providers
Added an explanation tooltip for unavailable features in the Create Recovery Media dialog in the Comet Backup desktop app
Added safeguards to ensure the Hyper-V Protected Item “Latest VM state” mode is only used with supported Windows versions, in the Comet Server web interface and the Comet Backup desktop app
Improved the performance of evaluating the “if last job was missed” schedule option
Fixed an issue when restoring Disk Image Protected Items to VMware virtual disk files with ZERO extents present
Fixed an issue with “Converting PfxData: pkcs12: unknown attribute” error messages when Comet Server uses some types of SSL certificate
Fixed an issue with unclear error messages when running a Hyper-V Protected Item using “Latest VM state” mode on unsupported Windows versions
Fixed an issue with the Comet Backup desktop app not allowing you to create an IDrive Storage Vault with a bucket name that is five characters long
Fixed an issue with the Create Recovery Media dialog not allowing moving to the next page when manually typing a path to create an ISO file
Fixed a cosmetic issue with misleading appearance of the Create Recovery Media dialog if the image generation failed
About Version 2 Limited Version 2 Digital is one of the most dynamic IT companies in Asia. The company distributes a wide range of IT products across various areas including cyber security, cloud, data protection, end points, infrastructures, system monitoring, storage, networking, business productivity and communication products.
Through an extensive network of channels, point of sales, resellers, and partnership companies, Version 2 offers quality products and services which are highly acclaimed in the market. Its customers cover a wide spectrum which include Global 1000 enterprises, regional listed companies, different vertical industries, public utilities, Government, a vast number of successful SMEs, and consumers in various Asian cities.
About Comet We are a team of dedicated professionals committed to developing reliable and secure backup solutions for MSP’s, Businesses and IT professionals. With over 10 years of experience in the industry, we understand the importance of having a reliable backup solution in place to protect your valuable data. That’s why we’ve developed a comprehensive suite of backup solutions that are easy to use, scalable and highly secure.
“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 July 2024.
There were six Comet releases during July – four in the Voyager release series, plus two updates for our Enceladus release series.
The NTFS filesystem on Windows supports many advanced features. One feature is its advanced permission and ACL support, allowing control over which Windows user accounts have access to read or access certain files. Another special NTFS feature is Alternate Data Streams (ADS), which allow the file’s main content to be accompanied by entirely different data streams.
In Comet version 24.6.2 or later, we have added a new option “Back up extra system permissions and attributes” to configure for File & Folder Protected Items.
When the new option is selected, Comet will back up the following additional NTFS data:
Attributes (system, hidden, integrity)
Alternate Data Streams (ADS)
Extended Attributes (EA)
Full Windows permissions (SACL / DACL)
The extra permissions and attributes are preserved for files and directories. When the file or directory is restored from a Windows device, the permissions and attributes will be re-applied. If the restore takes place on a non-Windows device, the extra information will not be available.
Protecting Alternate Data Streams on Windows devices is vital for maintaining data integrity, application functionality and security. You can now easily include these important attributes in your backups, ensuring a robust and secure backup strategy.
Granular Restore for FAT32, EXT4, and XFS filesystems
Granular Restore enables the recovery of individual files and folders from within a virtual disk image, without having to restore the entire disk.
As part of Comet 24.6.3, we have improved our Granular Restore feature to work with FAT32, EXT4, and XFS filesystems. For partners protecting Linux based Virtual Machines using our Hyper-V or VMware Protected Items, you will be able to recover individual files and folders without needing to restore the entire VM. To make use of this feature, all you need to do is upgrade to Comet version 24.6.3 or later.
This means you are able to recover data faster, reducing downtime and enhancing productivity.
Networking related errors are an inevitable part of downloading data from a S3 Storage Vault. Previously, when downloading data from an S3 Storage Vault, Comet would attempt up to 10 retries to successfully download the data. However, each time an error occurs, the process has to start over from the beginning. This is particularly problematic for Comet’s index files, which can become quite large.
If Comet is unable to successfully download the index files, it is unable to start the back up job. This is because the index files are a critical part of how Comet backs up data to Storage Vaults.
With Comet 24.6.2, we have improved downloads from S3 Storage Vaults to dynamically restart from where they left off, instead of starting over from the beginning. This means that when an error occurs, Comet can resume the download from the point where the interruption happened. This reduces the amount of data that needs to be re-downloaded and improves the overall reliability of Comet when backing up to a S3 Storage Vault.
Notice: Windows System Backup Protected Item Deprecation
Our Windows System Backup Protected Item is being deprecated. Before we added our Disk Image Protected Item, Windows System Backup Protected Item was a great way to backup and restore entire Windows disks. However, it required spool space (temporary storage) to be able to perform this backup. This means for a 500GB disk, Comet requires an additional 500GB of free space for this Protected Item to work.
As part of our deprecation process for our Windows System Backup Protected Item, upon upgrading to Comet 24.6.3 or later, back up jobs for this Protected Item will now finish with a warning status. Please convert these Protected Items to Disk Image Protected Items before this option is removed from Comet in November (Comet Release 24.11).
We’re committed to continuously improving our services and look forward to delivering even more enhancements in the future. Thank you for your continued support!
About Version 2 Limited Version 2 Digital is one of the most dynamic IT companies in Asia. The company distributes a wide range of IT products across various areas including cyber security, cloud, data protection, end points, infrastructures, system monitoring, storage, networking, business productivity and communication products.
Through an extensive network of channels, point of sales, resellers, and partnership companies, Version 2 offers quality products and services which are highly acclaimed in the market. Its customers cover a wide spectrum which include Global 1000 enterprises, regional listed companies, different vertical industries, public utilities, Government, a vast number of successful SMEs, and consumers in various Asian cities.
About Comet We are a team of dedicated professionals committed to developing reliable and secure backup solutions for MSP’s, Businesses and IT professionals. With over 10 years of experience in the industry, we understand the importance of having a reliable backup solution in place to protect your valuable data. That’s why we’ve developed a comprehensive suite of backup solutions that are easy to use, scalable and highly secure.
Fixed an issue with the Users list page in the Comet Server web interface being reverse sorted by default
Fixed an issue with the Settings and Admin Account pages failing to render for an admin user in the Comet Server web interface
Fixed an issue with Comet Server config files being updated with an invalid Admin Organization
Fixed a crash when loading the Comet Server web interface on a Comet Server with Auth Role disabled
About Version 2 Limited Version 2 Digital is one of the most dynamic IT companies in Asia. The company distributes a wide range of IT products across various areas including cyber security, cloud, data protection, end points, infrastructures, system monitoring, storage, networking, business productivity and communication products.
Through an extensive network of channels, point of sales, resellers, and partnership companies, Version 2 offers quality products and services which are highly acclaimed in the market. Its customers cover a wide spectrum which include Global 1000 enterprises, regional listed companies, different vertical industries, public utilities, Government, a vast number of successful SMEs, and consumers in various Asian cities.
About Comet We are a team of dedicated professionals committed to developing reliable and secure backup solutions for MSP’s, Businesses and IT professionals. With over 10 years of experience in the industry, we understand the importance of having a reliable backup solution in place to protect your valuable data. That’s why we’ve developed a comprehensive suite of backup solutions that are easy to use, scalable and highly secure.
Fixed an issue with the Syncro integration preventing backup job warnings and errors from being raised as an RMM Alert
Fixed an issue for Hyper-V Protected Items that caused the error message “Incorrect Function” to occur when backing up guest VMs
Fixed an issue for Microsoft 365 Protected Items that caused the error message “invalid character ‘S’ looking for beginning of value” to be returned during listing of accounts
Fixed an issue with Hyper-V Changed Block Tracking falling back to full scans
About Version 2 Limited Version 2 Digital is one of the most dynamic IT companies in Asia. The company distributes a wide range of IT products across various areas including cyber security, cloud, data protection, end points, infrastructures, system monitoring, storage, networking, business productivity and communication products.
Through an extensive network of channels, point of sales, resellers, and partnership companies, Version 2 offers quality products and services which are highly acclaimed in the market. Its customers cover a wide spectrum which include Global 1000 enterprises, regional listed companies, different vertical industries, public utilities, Government, a vast number of successful SMEs, and consumers in various Asian cities.
About Comet We are a team of dedicated professionals committed to developing reliable and secure backup solutions for MSP’s, Businesses and IT professionals. With over 10 years of experience in the industry, we understand the importance of having a reliable backup solution in place to protect your valuable data. That’s why we’ve developed a comprehensive suite of backup solutions that are easy to use, scalable and highly secure.
Fixed an issue for Hyper-V Protected Items that caused the error message “Incorrect Function” to occur when backing up guest VMs
Fixed an issue for Microsoft 365 Protected Items that caused the error message “invalid character ‘S’ looking for beginning of value” to be returned during listing of accounts
Fixed an issue with the Comet Backup desktop app and Comet Server changing device ID unexpectedly when SSH host keys are changed on Linux
Fixed an issue with backups not getting skipped even if “Skip if already running” is set when there are simultaneous backup jobs running
Fixed an issue with “warning 6001” error messages outputted in the Comet Server server log when generating a custom codesigned Windows client installer
Fixed an issue where backup jobs could complete successfully when a previous retention pass failed due to retention pass failures not being recorded properly
Fixed an issue with the Comet Backup desktop app crashing when a user browses a target directory using the web interface
Fixed an issue with Constellation Role where buckets with Object Lock enabled were not deleted
Fixed an issue with Hyper-V Changed Block Tracking falling back to full scans
About Version 2 Limited Version 2 Digital is one of the most dynamic IT companies in Asia. The company distributes a wide range of IT products across various areas including cyber security, cloud, data protection, end points, infrastructures, system monitoring, storage, networking, business productivity and communication products.
Through an extensive network of channels, point of sales, resellers, and partnership companies, Version 2 offers quality products and services which are highly acclaimed in the market. Its customers cover a wide spectrum which include Global 1000 enterprises, regional listed companies, different vertical industries, public utilities, Government, a vast number of successful SMEs, and consumers in various Asian cities.
About Comet We are a team of dedicated professionals committed to developing reliable and secure backup solutions for MSP’s, Businesses and IT professionals. With over 10 years of experience in the industry, we understand the importance of having a reliable backup solution in place to protect your valuable data. That’s why we’ve developed a comprehensive suite of backup solutions that are easy to use, scalable and highly secure.
We sat down for a chat with Josh Flores, our General Manager who has been with the company since before the launch of Comet Backup in 2017. This piece has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
What is your role and how long have you been at Comet?
I’m the General Manager and I’ve been at the company for about 10 years, before Comet became Comet. I have done pretty much every job here at Comet, apart from coding.
Tell us about when you first started working with this leadership team.
I first joined the company when it was Nexus Data Backup, a large backup provider for medical centers, law firms, and other businesses across New Zealand.
A few years later, we sold that backup MSP side of the business. During this time, we had developed our own internal tool, called MyClient, for monitoring all the backup solutions we were using.
Then after a number of years, we launched Comet Backup based on our experience running those earlier businesses.
How did the team decide to develop Comet as a backup solution?
Running MyClient was interesting because we were the integration tool for all of these other backup products. We interacted with the MSPs that were using our tool to manage their backup solutions and we heard a lot from the MSPs about the tools they liked and didn’t like.
We also heard from the MSPs about what they wanted in backup software, but they couldn’t necessarily find. We were getting to the point that the MSPs were asking us to custom build features in MyClient to cover the gap in that functionality that they wanted in their backup software.
Since we were already doing some backup development, we explored the idea of building our own backup solution. That’s when we went through the process of R&D. After beta testing and development, we launched Comet in February 2017.
Every day there’s something new. There’s always new types of customers, new advancement in the technology. Since the early days, our team has grown dramatically. We now have a customer base spanning 120 countries, and vendor relationships around the world. Every quarter, we’re expanding in really exciting ways.
How would you describe the team culture at Comet?
It’s amazing. We have a very dedicated team that are really interested in the company, in our customers, and what they’re doing. And that passion is contagious.
We also have a very diverse and international team, people from different industries and different cultures. All of that adds to the amazing team culture Comet. Work is always fun when you enjoy the people you work with.
How have you maintained the team culture as the company has grown?
We’re selective in our hiring process to prioritize ensuring people will be a great cultural fit. Occasionally, we’ve interviewed candidates who have an outstanding technical skillset, but they would have altered the team dynamic and we’ve passed on those opportunities.
I’d rather hire someone who’s hard working, eager to learn and has a positive attitude and train them up a bit. It’s incredibly important to me to nurture and protect the team environment we’ve built.
How does Comet support the culture of both the remote and office based teams?
Comet has a hybrid working model with a few days in the office and a few days where team members can work from home. We also have some team members who are fully remote.
We try and do absolutely everything we can do to ensure that if you’re remote, you still feel like one of the team. On Slack we have our weekly virtual coffee catchups. We really encourage people to talk, not just about work all day, but also to connect on a personal level because that makes spending time together so much more meaningful.
We have different Slack channels like the pets channel, food channel, games channel. People often share photos of their holidays. Stuff like that. It keeps things fun.
We also have CometCon twice a year where we get everyone together for a week for our internal company conference to connect and hang out in person.
CometCon is an opportunity for us come together to collaborate and connect in person. Teams that don’t work as closely on a daily basis will lead sessions where the whole company gathers to brainstorm and learn from one another.
A recent example of this is our marketing department did workshop on our website. And developers who normally wouldn’t give input on that area of the business had a say in the process.
Everyone is encouraged to share their opinions, to critique how we do things, to offer up new ideas. Anyone, at any level, can propose and give one of the scheduled talks on a topic they think would be useful to the company.
It’s also a chance to have some fun together. The social events and the food is always a highlight during the week, especially the taco truck. We spend a lot of time focusing on building the product, but it’s also really important for us to have balance and have fun.
What are some of your interests and hobbies outside of work?
In my free time I really like to chill out – I’m into movies, I do a lot of reading, going to the pub, walking the dogs. I’m also really into cooking and trying new stuff, like barbecuing.
About Version 2 Limited Version 2 Digital is one of the most dynamic IT companies in Asia. The company distributes a wide range of IT products across various areas including cyber security, cloud, data protection, end points, infrastructures, system monitoring, storage, networking, business productivity and communication products.
Through an extensive network of channels, point of sales, resellers, and partnership companies, Version 2 offers quality products and services which are highly acclaimed in the market. Its customers cover a wide spectrum which include Global 1000 enterprises, regional listed companies, different vertical industries, public utilities, Government, a vast number of successful SMEs, and consumers in various Asian cities.
About Comet We are a team of dedicated professionals committed to developing reliable and secure backup solutions for MSP’s, Businesses and IT professionals. With over 10 years of experience in the industry, we understand the importance of having a reliable backup solution in place to protect your valuable data. That’s why we’ve developed a comprehensive suite of backup solutions that are easy to use, scalable and highly secure.
The Windows System Backup Protected Item is being deprecated. Windows System Backup Protected Items will still successfully backup, but will show a Warning notice on completion
Added support for Gen 1 VHD virtual disk for Hyper-V Protected Items when using the Hyper-V Latest VM State mode. VHD virtual disks will be stored in a VHDX format
Improved performance for granular restore of NTFS filesystems with complex or deep directory structures
Improved the speed of retention passes by using cached information to estimate the size of data that is in a Storage Vault
Improved Hyper-V Latest VM State (Changed Block Tracking) to respect the user’s configured Hyper-V checkpoint settings on a per-VM basis instead of always attempting to take Production checkpoints
Fixed an issue causing Comet to fail to provision Object Lock buckets when using an Impossible Cloud (Object Lock) storage template
Fixed an issue on the Comet Server web interface that showed the About this Cluster menu for admins who had the “Prevent viewing and editing server settings” policy permission applied
Fixed an issue with loading SSL certificates in Comet Server if a PFX file uses the SHA256 algorithm
Fixed an issue with loading SSL certificates in Comet Server if a PFX file orders private keys after certificates
Fixed an issue with not allowing “All items” for granular restore in the Comet Backup desktop app
Fixed an issue with the Syncro integration preventing backup job warnings and errors from being raised as an RMM Alert
About Version 2 Limited Version 2 Digital is one of the most dynamic IT companies in Asia. The company distributes a wide range of IT products across various areas including cyber security, cloud, data protection, end points, infrastructures, system monitoring, storage, networking, business productivity and communication products.
Through an extensive network of channels, point of sales, resellers, and partnership companies, Version 2 offers quality products and services which are highly acclaimed in the market. Its customers cover a wide spectrum which include Global 1000 enterprises, regional listed companies, different vertical industries, public utilities, Government, a vast number of successful SMEs, and consumers in various Asian cities.
About Comet We are a team of dedicated professionals committed to developing reliable and secure backup solutions for MSP’s, Businesses and IT professionals. With over 10 years of experience in the industry, we understand the importance of having a reliable backup solution in place to protect your valuable data. That’s why we’ve developed a comprehensive suite of backup solutions that are easy to use, scalable and highly secure.
Fixed an issue where deleted files in a versioned S3 bucket would get undeleted if errors occurred when listing files during a retention pass
Fixed an issue causing Comet Server to crash when a missed backup job is generated from devices with unrecognized timezones
Fixed an issue causing Comet Server to crash when attempting to download a DSM 6/7 client installer when Comet Server was installed using the Linux (other) installer
Fixed an issue where some NTFS volumes could not be recognised as NTFS partitions leading to browsing failure at the time of restore
Fixed an issue with retention passes on Storage Vaults without Object Lock showing Object Lock specific errors instead of the real retention pass error
Fixed a Microsoft 365 listing issue where default permissions were receiving 403s from retrieving Site information
Fixed an issue causing Comet to fail to provision Object Lock buckets from Impossible Cloud storage templates
About Version 2 Limited Version 2 Digital is one of the most dynamic IT companies in Asia. The company distributes a wide range of IT products across various areas including cyber security, cloud, data protection, end points, infrastructures, system monitoring, storage, networking, business productivity and communication products.
Through an extensive network of channels, point of sales, resellers, and partnership companies, Version 2 offers quality products and services which are highly acclaimed in the market. Its customers cover a wide spectrum which include Global 1000 enterprises, regional listed companies, different vertical industries, public utilities, Government, a vast number of successful SMEs, and consumers in various Asian cities.
About Comet We are a team of dedicated professionals committed to developing reliable and secure backup solutions for MSP’s, Businesses and IT professionals. With over 10 years of experience in the industry, we understand the importance of having a reliable backup solution in place to protect your valuable data. That’s why we’ve developed a comprehensive suite of backup solutions that are easy to use, scalable and highly secure.
