Thebe is the latest entry in our quarterly rollup series. It branches off from our main rolling Voyager development into a fixed target for our partners to qualify and build upon.
Like Comet’s previous recent quarterly software releases, ‘Thebe’ is named after a moon of Jupiter, which in turn takes its name from an ancient Greek mythological figure. It is a very small moon with only 0.004x earth’s gravity, meaning it is less likely to shape itself into a sphere – in fact a large impact crater covers around 40% of its surface area.
It was discovered by the Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft in 1979, but owing to its small size and position, almost nothing more could be discovered until the next spacecraft Galileo visited two decades later. Scientists believe it contains water ice.
As for the software, Comet 23.5.0 ‘Thebe’ brings 10 features and 22 enhancements, including S3 Object Lock support for immutable protection against ransomware, a new design for the Comet Server web interface, an official Docker container, a C# SDK, support for Azure Key Vault codesigning, and more.
As always for a new quarterly release, there are two changelogs for 23.5.0 ‘Thebe’ depending on whether you are coming from the previous quarterly release or the previous Voyager release:
Cosmetic overhaul for the Comet Server web interface
An official Comet Server docker container, which offers MSPs another deployment option. For more details, visit this link
Support for Azure Key Vault as an option for Windows Authenticode codesigning
Ability to use S3 object locking
New option to permanently remove files marked for deletion in versioned S3 storage
New Comet Server home page widgets for Protected Items types, server storage, server self-backup, and server replication
When configuring an exclusion via Policy in the Comet Server web interface, default suggested exclusion paths have been added
Ability to search for items to restore within Storage Vault snapshots via the Comet Server web interface
A Test Connection button has been added to Storage Template configuration dialog
Authenticode codesigning has been applied to the Comet Backup client uninstaller on Windows
About Version 2 Version 2 is one of the most dynamic IT companies in Asia. The company develops and distributes IT products for Internet and IP-based networks, including communication systems, Internet software, security, network, and media 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, 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 May 2023.
There were four Comet software releases during May, all in the weekly 23.3.x Voyager release series. The work this month included a mix of core application development as well as projects in the surrounding ecosystem:
Earlier in May, Mason gave a presentation of the history and overview of backup technologies, starting with simple file copies, through chain-based approaches, and culminating in the Content-Defined Chunking technology used by Comet.
Docker is a popular system for running applications in “containers”. In the same way that freight shipping containers have a consistent size and shape, in order to fit within a larger shipping ecosystem, Docker containers also have some consistent behaviors in order to fit within a larger application runtime ecosystem: a “containerized” application has a standard way to start, stop, and log messages; how their storage and configuration is managed, how ingress and TLS termination works, and how sandboxing and permission restrictions are applied.
By offering Comet Server as a Docker (OCI) container, it should be easy for existing Docker users to get started with the Self-Hosted app and to manage it going forward. It also enables new functionality such as running multiple self-hosted Comet Servers on the same PC or VM. This does not replace the existing Self-Hosted installers, which will continue to be available.
There has been a long-standing open feature request for an official Docker container. Thank you to everyone who voted and commented on this feature, and a special thanks to “Hobadee” for providing an unofficial solution to the community so far.
When you visit the the Comet Server web interface, your web browser loads and runs a “Single Page App” (SPA) locally inside your browser. This webapp speaks to the Comet Server backend solely using our public API. This API broadly covers every action you take within the Comet Server web interface, which means if you can do an action in the web interface, then it can be automated by a developer.
During May, we put the finishing touches on the latest addition to this group – a new public .NET SDK. It’s available as CometBackup.CometAPI.SDK on NuGet and is developed in C# for use with any compliant .NET Standard 2.0 runtime, including .NET Framework 4.6, .NET Core 2.0, .NET 5, or any later versions.
Getting started with the SDK should be straightforward:
using (var client = new CometAPI("http://127.0.0.1:8060", "admin-user", "admin-password")) { var users = client.AdminListUsers(); foreach (var user in users) { Console.WriteLine(user); }}
Every API method is also available as an Async() version to allow for concurrency.
Our SDK version numbers generally adhere to Semantic Versioning and any enthusiastic readers may have noticed this SDK uses a “version zero” version number at present. We don’t necessarily expect to make breaking changes, but we are actively requesting feedback about this new SDK from existing C# users to ensure we’ve created something idiomatic. We’d love to hear any feedback about the SDK design or any bug reports before we commit to v1 compatibility, so if you are a C# developer then please reach out by ticket or on GitHub.
To help our partners meet their compliance obligations, we’ve added advanced audit logging capabilities into Comet Server. Almost every action – including login events for administrators and users, restoring data, changes to user and server settings, and more – can now be logged server-side into a secure file.
This work was based on expanding Comet Server’s live event streaming features to cover a much more comprehensive set of data. If you are making use of the existing Webhook feature or the Websocket API feature, when upgrading to Comet Server 23.3.7 or later, you may start receiving a larger amount of data. You can control this by declaring a restriction on the streamable event types you want to receive.
In current versions of Comet, this feature must be configured by setting the AuditFileOptions property inside the cometd.cfg file. We expect to make it available via the Comet Server web interface soon!
As we approached the quarterly release, we took a special focus on quality improvements to give us a solid foundation.
The fresh new design for the Comet Server web interface had its debut in 23.3.3, and since then throughout the 23.3.x Voyager release track, we have spent additional time and effort to ensure quality. In the latest versions of Comet Server you will see fewer cosmetic issues as this work has stabilised nicely.
We’ve also made significant performance improvements to key areas of the client application. Performing granular restore of single files from inside a Disk Image or Hyper-V backup may now be 3-8x faster while using 40% less memory. Comet also now uses less memory for loading files from S3-compatible Storage destinations like Wasabi, and when loading very large files from a Storage Vault.
The Office 365 Protected Item type in Comet has been a continued development focus this quarter, including a partial rewrite. Comet is now better able to handle incremental changes to mailboxes; the reported error messages are more detailed; and Office 365 backup jobs taken with the latest version of Comet should be more resilient against network errors and rate-limiting from the Microsoft Graph API. We would encourage all users to raise a support ticket if you experience any issues with Office 365 backups as we continue to improve the sync capabilities.
On the 1st of June, we put the finishing touches on our latest quarterly release, Comet 23.5.0 “Thebe”.
Thebe is the latest entry in our quarterly rollup series. It branches off from our main rolling Voyager development into a fixed target for you to qualify and build your service offering upon.
Like Comet’s previous recent quarterly software releases, “Thebe” is named after a moon of Jupiter, which in turn takes its name from an ancient Greek mythological figure. It is a very small moon with only 0.004x Earth’s gravity, meaning it is less likely to shape itself into a sphere – in fact a large impact crater covers around 40% of its surface area:
It was discovered by the Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft in 1979, but owing to its small size and position, almost nothing more could be discovered until the next spacecraft Galileo visited two decades later. Scientists believe it contains frozen water.
As always for a new quarterly release, there are two changelogs for 23.5.0 “Thebe” depending on whether you are coming from the previous quarterly release or the previous Voyager release. You can see the full details in the release notes.
That’s all for this month! Thanks for reading – there are some more great features currently under development that we’re excited to be able to share with you soon. As always, please follow @CometBackup on Twitter and you can always contact us if you have any questions.
About Version 2 Version 2 is one of the most dynamic IT companies in Asia. The company develops and distributes IT products for Internet and IP-based networks, including communication systems, Internet software, security, network, and media 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, 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.
Fix an issue with macOS devices failing to log in with an ERR_UNKNOWN_DEVICE error
Fix an issue with the Recent Activity and Policies pages not loading correctly when hard-refreshed or loaded directly via URL
Fix an issue with Comet default branding not presenting correctly following a server upgrade
About Version 2 Version 2 is one of the most dynamic IT companies in Asia. The company develops and distributes IT products for Internet and IP-based networks, including communication systems, Internet software, security, network, and media 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, 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.
I’m from Stockholm, Sweden and I just celebrated 5 years in New Zealand! Times flies when you are having fun! Love, family and new adventures brought me to this lovely country.
What is the one thing about Sweden that you’d like non-Swedes to know about?
We have a useful word that I don’t think many other countries have – “lagom”. It means not too much, not too little, but just the right amount and it’s a very handy word to have in your vocabulary (I think).
Also, that there are no polar bears in Sweden. It’s funny how many times I get asked that question!
This is my seventh week at Comet, but it feels longer than that (in a good way)!
Before Comet, after completing a master’s degree in IT engineering and a bachelor’s in business studies, I worked as a BI Consultant in Stockholm for 8 years. When I moved here, I started working as a Senior Product Owner and I did that for almost 5 years before joining Comet.
The industry was completely new to me, and I wanted to try working in a younger business that was growing fast. Having the chance to be the first dedicated product person in the company was an exciting opportunity too!
How would you describe your role as Product Manager at Comet?
In short, my role is to work closely with all Comet teams to ensure we deliver a high-quality product with a great user experience, that meets the business goals and our customers’ needs!
But to expand a bit on that, I need to keep up with industry trends, understand the market needs, know the competitor landscape, and understand what our customer needs and their pain points.
Combining this information with the business strategy, product metrics, data analytics, and all the input from Comet’s teams, I can create a product roadmap that outlines how the product will be developed and what the teams will be focused on for the next while.
Basically, as a Product Manager, you are responsible for guiding the direction of the product and its development, making sure we’re working on the right things to ensure the continued success of our product and keep growing our market share.
It was great! Everyone was so friendly and welcoming, and I’ve always enjoyed working with smart, talented, and down-to-earth people, so that has been one of the highlights here at Comet so far.
What aspects of your role challenge and excite you?
It’s wonderful how much trust, support, and freedom Comet gives me – they trust me to do the job as I see fit. I just hope I can live up to their expectations and do my part to help continue making Comet the success story it already is!
Product Managers have to juggle a lot of activities and deadlines. What best practices would you recommend for organising one’s workload?
I think a simple to-do list does the trick, but you need to make sure to re-prioritize the items on the list regularly, based on their urgency and how important they are. When I get stuck, I refer back to the product vision or strategy to figure out what should be done first (or just take a break to clear my head).
You love being out and about. Would you recommend any running or biking trails in the Canterbury area?
I think it’s really nice running or biking up the Rapaki track and then going down Victoria Park and Bowenvale Valley – it’s such a peaceful area and the views up there are great too!
What’s the most memorable or most interesting thing that’s happened to you on a trip?
In 2019 I spent three months biking around South America – the whole trip was pretty memorable, but riding through coca plantations and getting stopped by a group of suspicious-looking characters to have a beer is probably up there.
Yeah it was pretty scary – we were biking around South America and this truck comes with these five guys, and you can tell they’re working at the coca plantation. They were all drinking beer and seemed to be drunk, and they stopped where we were. They were speaking Spanish and we could only understand a couple of words. Then they offered us a drink and we couldn’t say no!
There is an ongoing debate at the Comet office on whether or not pineapple should be a pizza topping. Would you care to share your thoughts on this?
Ha! No, I don’t think pineapple should be a pizza topping – but if I can stick with my pepperoni pizzas, I don´t mind if others have pineapple on their pizzas.
About Version 2 Version 2 is one of the most dynamic IT companies in Asia. The company develops and distributes IT products for Internet and IP-based networks, including communication systems, Internet software, security, network, and media 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, 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.
Enhancement: Reduce peak memory usage when loading very large single files from a Storage Vault
Enhancement: Reduce memory usage for S3-compatible Storage destinations
About Version 2 Version 2 is one of the most dynamic IT companies in Asia. The company develops and distributes IT products for Internet and IP-based networks, including communication systems, Internet software, security, network, and media 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, 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.
