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 Digital
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 Digital
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 Digital
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 Digital
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 Digital
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.
