Written by Callum Sinclair - Product Engingeering Manager

Comet 25.8.0 Titan​

Comet 25.8.0 Titan, our latest Quarterly release, brings 4 new features and 7 enhancements, including a General Access Beta for Proxmox VE Protected Item backup, an MSI Installer for Comet Backup desktop app on Windows, an RPM Installer for Comet Backup desktop app on Linux, and much more.

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

Why Titan?​

This Quarterly release is named after Saturn's moon Titan. Fun fact: Titan, Saturn's largest moon, is the only moon with a substantial atmosphere and the only place besides Earth known to have liquids on its surface, including clouds, rain, rivers, lakes and seas of liquid hydrocarbons like methane and ethane.

Webinar announcement​

Join us for our Quarterly webinar on Tuesday, September 23rd (4pm ET / 1pm PT). Comet's CTO, Mason, will cover all the latest product updates, with a live question-and-answer session at the end.

New Feature: Proxmox Virtual Environment Protected Item General Access Beta​

With Comet 25.8.0 Titan, our new Proxmox VE Protected Item is now available as a General Access Beta feature.

Proxmox Virtual Environment is a complete, open-source server management platform for virtualization.It tightly integrates the KVM hypervisor, Linux Containers (LXC), software-defined storage, and networking functionality on a single platform. With the integrated web-based user interface you can manage VMs, containers, high availability for clusters, and the integrated disaster recovery tools with ease.

Features of Comet's Proxmox VE Backup​

Note: Features listed here are work in progress and may not be available during the beta

• Virtual Machine and Container Backup & Restore
• Restore Virtual Machines to Hyper-V, Proxmox and VMware
• Restore Physical Machines from Disk Image Protected Items
• Migration Tool from Hyper-V and VMware

Migrate virtual environments from VMware to Proxmox​

Our new Proxmox VE Protected Item can be used to migrate VMs away from VMware onto a Proxmox Cluster.

If you have an existing VMware Protected Item with Comet, you can migrate to Proxmox quickly without losing your backup history. This allows you to restore an older VM backup if required without needing to use any other systems or manage multiple backup jobs per VM.

Once Comet has performed a VMware VM backup, if you set the Proxmox Protected Item to back up the same VM to the same Storage Vault as the VMware Protected Item, Comet's chunking algorithm will be able to deduplicate the backups together. This has a large number of benefits such as reducing total Storage required to maintain VM backups from multiple hypervisors and significantly faster backups as the first Proxmox VM backup does not need to reupload a lot of data.

Please note:

• As these features are in beta, they come with a risk of bugs or unintended behavior
• Check this link for known beta limitations

New Feature: RPM installer for Comet Backup desktop app​

We're proud to announce that a native RPM installer is now available for the Comet Backup desktop app. This is especially useful for MSPs supporting Red Hat, CentOS, AlmaLinux, Rocky Linux, and other RPM-based distributions.

Comet Backup's RPM installer is ideal for Linux users who want better manageability, consistency, and compliance in their backup deployments.

New Feature: MSI Installer​

To provide more flexibility for installing the Comet Backup desktop application on Windows, Comet now offers a new MSI installer option.

Using an MSI installer is great option for mass deployments and supports all the install features and flags that Comet's .exe installer offers.

MSPs looking to automate their large scale Comet deployments using products such as Intune can now do this easier than ever before.

New Feature: Automatically Create New Storage Vaults via Policies​

You can now automatically create new Storage Vaults when new devices register, based on predefined rules in your device policy.

Since Comet 24.12.0, a new user setting has been available to choose if devices that share the same user account should back up Protected Items to a shared Storage Vault or isolated Storage Vaults.

This has been extended to interact with Comet's Policy system to set Default Protected Items. A Default Protected Item is a great way to ensure Protected Items are automatically created when a new device is registered to a user.

Now, when the Policy setting under the Storage Vaults tab Automatically create Storage Vault for new devices is configured, new devices registered to a user will have a Default Protected Item created and will have a Storage Vault automatically provisioned and ready to back up.

To make the most out of the Default Protected Item feature, you will need to set a Schedule when configuring the Default Protected Item.

When the Storage Vault for the Schedule is set to The Latest Storage Vault, any new device registered to the user with this policy set will automatically have a Protected Item and new Storage Vault created and will back up data to this new Storage Vault based on the Schedule.

Written by Michelle Wong - Marketing Specialist

IT Professionals Day falls on the third Tuesday of each September and was established in 2015 to celebrate the IT pros who keep everything running behind the scenes. This year #ITProDay is on September 16th, 2025.

We celebrate the everyday IT heroes, the people who know how to fix everything, and when to just say: “Have you tried turning it off and on again?”

Let’s be honest: a lot of people think IT is just about fixing the printer.

But we know better.

You’re juggling ransomware scares, patch management, cloud migrations, “urgent” tickets, and also making sure the backups are running, verified, and ready to save the day when disaster strikes.

Tips on how to celebrate #ITProDay​

For the end users out there, here are a few quick things you can try before calling your MSP or IT team. These small steps won’t solve every problem, but they might save you a ticket (and earn you some brownie points with IT):

1. Restart the device: It really is a classic.
2. Make sure it’s powered on: We’ve all missed the obvious once or twice.
3. Check if it’s plugged in: Sometimes it really is because it’s not plugged in properly.
4. Install updates when prompted: They’re there for a reason (and IT will thank you later).
5. Back up important files: If you don’t, your IT pro already has your back (literally), but a little extra caution never hurts.

Why IT Pros Deserve More Than Just a “Thanks”​

MSPs and IT pros do far more than the rest of the world sees:

• You’re the first line of defense against cyber threats
• You keep businesses running with secure, tested backups
• You restore the “lost file” that was actually in the recycle bin all along… but also the critical data that saves a business
• You save the day without most people even knowing it needed saving

Backups don’t check themselves, restores don’t test themselves, and disaster recovery doesn’t happen by magic, it’s all thanks to the IT professionals out there.

Happy IT Professionals Day!​

In all seriousness, we appreciate all the hard work that talented IT professionals do every single day. IT professionals and technical experts are essential to the success of every part of an organization, no matter how big or small.

Today (and every day), we raise our coffee mugs to all the IT professionals, the real MVPs and everyday heroes.

More 2025 IT Holidays + Free Marketing Resources​

Check out our blog post on 2025 IT Holidays for more cybersecurity awareness days, and download our free marketing resources to help educate your end users about how they can stay safe in our digital world.

Written by Michelle Wong - Marketing Specialist

ShadowTech25 at Comet Backup​

This August, Comet Backup was proud to take part in ShadowTech25, a nationwide initiative from TechWomen giving high school girls across Aotearoa New Zealand the chance to experience a day in the tech industry, connect with women in tech, and explore future career possibilities.

We welcomed five students Year 9-11 from Akaroa Area School to our Christchurch office for a day of learning, inspiration, hands-on activities, some fun games and plenty of laughs. The day was designed to show that tech is a diverse field, and that in addition to programming, there are many different career pathways available.

Along the way, they discovered that tech is about so much more than coding, it’s about creativity, problem-solving, teamwork…and sometimes even pizza.

Inspiring Future Generations​

The students got a behind-the-scenes look at how a global software company operates, and how technology plays a role in every department. They explored areas such as customer success, marketing, software testing, product development, and engineering, seeing how each area contributes to building great software.

The day included:

• Meet & Greet: Introduction to the Comet Backup team and an overview of how our different departments work together
• Office Tour: Showcasing our space themed decorations, artwork, astronaut mascot, and of course, the very popular snack trolley and candy jars
• Women in Tech Panel Q&A:  Personal journeys in tech, career pathways, and life lessons from the Women of Comet, representing a range of industries and roles
• Interactive Sessions: Fun ice-breaker games, plus hands-on activities and talks on software testing and brand marketing (using TikToks and memes to communicate what we do)
• Pizza Lunch: At Comet we love connecting over shared food (especially pizza!) and enjoyed chatting with the students about their hobbies, sports, and favorite apps

Opportunities In Tech​

One key takeaway for the students was that technology careers aren’t limited to coding or programming. There are roles that combine creativity, problem-solving, communication, and technical expertise.

Another insight was that the Women of Comet came to tech from a variety of backgrounds and education, showing that not all career journeys are linear, and that there’s no single ‘right’ career path.

It was also fun for the Comet team to chat with the students and learn what technology and apps they use at school and in their everyday lives.

Before and After​

At the start of the day, we asked the students:

What comes to mind when you hear ‘Women in Tech’?

Each student wrote their thoughts on a sticky note. Most answers were focused on coding, programming, and computer science, a common perception of tech careers.

At the end of the day, we asked the same question again. This time, the responses were broader and also included using skills like creativity, problem solving, roles in marketing, testing, product development and more. One student summed it up perfectly “women can do anything.”

Seeing that shift in perspective over just one day was inspiring, and exactly what ShadowTech is all about.

Why it Matters​

At Comet, we believe diversity strengthens our team and our industry. Initiatives like ShadowTech help open doors and inspire the next generation to show young women that there’s space for them in tech, no matter their backgrounds, skills, or starting point.

Seeing the students’ perceptions shift from “tech equals coding” to “women can do anything” was the highlight of our day.

A huge thank you to TechWomen NZ for making the ShadowTech program possible, and to all the Comet team members who helped make the day welcoming, memorable, and full of inspiration (and snacks). We can’t wait to see where these talented students go next in their journeys!

Written by Callum Sinclair - Product Engingeering Manager

Proxmox VE Backup Is Coming Soon​

We're excited to announce that support for backing up Proxmox VE is on its way to Comet Backup. Whether you're already running Proxmox or exploring alternatives to VMware and Hyper-V, our upcoming Proxmox Protected Item will give you more options to protect VMs and virtual environments.

Learn More & Sign Up For Updates:​

• Join the waitlist to get email updates, info about beta testing, early access, and more
• Register for our Q3 Quarterly Release product webinar to join the the official launch webinar, with Q&A at the end
• Watch the announcement video clip from our Q2 Quarterly Webinar
• Visit our Feature Voting page to see how your ideas and votes shape our development priorities

Proxmox Virtual Environment​

Proxmox Virtual Environment is a complete, open-source server management platform for enterprise virtualization. It tightly integrates the KVM hypervisor and Linux Containers (LXC), software-defined storage and networking functionality, on a single platform. With the integrated web-based user interface you can manage VMs and containers, high availability for clusters, or the integrated disaster recovery tools with ease.

Many businesses turn to open-source virtualization to streamline their IT operations through server consolidation. Proxmox VE offers a license-free, fully featured virtualization platform that enhances flexibility, security, and reliability—making it a smart choice for modern infrastructure.

If you are looking to use Proxmox VE, you can find their comparison against VMware vSphere and Microsoft Hyper-V here.

Features of Comet's Proxmox VE Backup​

Note: Features listed here are work in progress and may not be avaliable during the beta

Virtual Machine and Container Backup & Restore​

Our new Proxmox VE Protected Item will support backing up and restoring Virtual Machines (VM's) and Linux Containers to and from a Proxmox Cluster.

Backing up VMs will also launch with Changed Block Tracking (CBT) support for fast backups as Comet only needs to back up disk sectors that have changed instead of scanning the entire disk to find what has changed since the last backup.

Restore Virtual Machines to Hyper-V, Proxmox and VMware​

Our new Proxmox VE Protected Item adds support for restoring VMs directly into a Proxmox Cluster. Once Comet's Proxmox VE Protected Item is launched customers will be able to restore a VM to Hyper-V, Proxmox or VMware hypervisors regardless of which hypervisor the backup was taken from.

Restore Physical Machines from Disk Image Protected Items​

Our new Proxmox VE Protected Item adds support for restoring physical Disk Image backups directly to a Proxmox Cluster. This is a great feature for customers needing to restore a Disk Image backup instantly without needing to aquire phyiscal hardware to perform the restore on.

Migration Tool from Hyper-V and VMware​

Our new Proxmox VE Protected Item can be used to migrate VMs away from Hyper-V or VMware onto a Proxmox Cluster. There are quite a few benefits for using Comet to migrate your Hyper-V or VMware VMs.

If you have an existing Hyper-V or VMware Protected Item backup, you can migrate to Proxmox quickly without losing your backup history. This allows you to restore an older VM backup if required without needing to use any other systems or manage multiple backup jobs per VM.

Once Comet has performed a Hyper-V or VMware VM backup, if you set the Proxmox Protected Item to back up the same VM to the same Storage Vault as the Hyper-V or VMware Protected Item Comet's chunking algorithm will be able to deduplicate the backups together. This has a large number of benefits such as reducing total Storage required to maintain VM backups from multiple hypervisors and significantly faster backups as the first Proxmox VM backup does not need to reupload a lot of data.

Proxmox Backup Beta Program​

How To Get Early Access To The Beta Program​

In August, Comet will be launching early access to our Proxmox VE Backup beta as a new Protected Item type in Comet's Voyager series. Try the Protected Item for free during the early access beta period until early September.

Please note:

• The beta is not for production use
• Check this link for known beta limitations

Stay Tuned​

We'll be sharing more updates and information as we get closer to launch.

Make sure to join the waitlist to get email updates about beta testing, early access, and stay in the loop.

Written by Michelle Wong - Marketing Specialist

Happy SysAdmin Day 2025​

Celebrated on the last Friday of July, System Administrator Appreciation Day means it’s time to officially say: thank you to the system administrators, IT pros, and tech teams who keep everything running behind the scenes.

Whether you're resetting passwords, patching vulnerabilities, wrangling cables, or restoring mission-critical data, you are the everyday IT heroes of modern business.

A little history​

SysAdmin Day was started in 2000 by system administrator Ted Kekatos as a way to recognize the vital role sysadmins play in keeping our digital infrastructure healthy. It’s been celebrated on the last Friday of July ever since. This year’s SysAdmin Day falls on Friday, July 26, 2025.

It’s one small day of appreciation for the people who keep things running 24/7/365.

What exactly is a SysAdmin?​

If you’ve ever submitted a ticket to “IT” for help, a SysAdmin was likely involved.

SysAdmins (or system administrators) are responsible for keeping IT environments operational, secure, and efficient. Their work touches just about everything in an organization, including:

• Data backup and disaster recovery
• Network and cybersecurity
• Managing users, access, and permissions
• Troubleshooting hardware and software
• System updates and configuration
• Automating routine IT processes

Importance of backups for System Administrators​

In the world of IT, backups are your last line of defense against ransomware, hardware failure, accidental deletions, human error (think spilling coffee on your laptop), or natural disasters.

A strong backup strategy helps businesses stay protected and bounce back quickly when things go wrong. That’s where Comet Backup comes in.

We built Comet for the IT professionals who need backups to just work, without sacrificing control. It's a fast, secure, all-in-one backup platform designed for IT teams and MSPs with powerful features like flexible storage options, configurable retention policies, and support for a broad range of backup types.

5 Pro Tips for SysAdmins using Comet Backup​

If you're already using Comet (or just getting started), here are a few quick tips to get the most out of it:

1. Check and configure user permissions User profiles are used in Comet’s encryption and key management, and therefore, act as a security boundary.

2. Enable MFA for admins and end users Multi-factor authentication adds an extra layer of protection for admin and end user logins.

3. Set a smart retention policy Keep what you need, clean up what you don’t to save storage space and ensure required data is kept for compliance and business continuity.

4. Schedule regular backups Automate backups on a regular schedule to ensure consistent data protection, improve business continuity, and reduce recovery time.

5.Customize email reports Stay informed and act fast. Set up custom reports so you know when something needs attention.

Here’s to the unsung heroes​

SysAdmins are often the first to respond when something goes wrong, and the last to be thanked when everything’s going smoothly.

We raise our glasses (or mugs of coffee) to all of the SysAdmins who keep our systems secure, our data safe, and our workdays running around the clock. Thank you for everything you do. Happy #SysAdminDay!

More 2025 IT Holidays + Free Marketing Resources​

Check out our blog post on 2025 IT Holidays for more cybersecurity awareness days, and download our free marketing resources to help educate your end users about how they can stay safe in our digital world.

Written by Michelle Wong - Marketing Specialist

We sat down for a chat with Noel Reyes, one of Comet’s Software Developers who has been with the company since October 2022. This piece has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Where have you seen Comet’s dev team make an impactful difference for customers?​

In our feature voting system, we had a highly requested feature for user groupings. I’m proud of the work Ben Frengley and I undertook to build that feature together.

Before customers were using the tenant feature in a way we hadn’t anticipated. We heard that feedback and built user groups specifically to make it easy for MSPs to group their clients and users, and for companies to group users by department. It really made a difference for customers and is a very handy feature.

How does the feature voting system inform what makes it onto Comet’s product roadmap?​

Whenever we're making decisions about what will be included on the quarterly product roadmap, feature requests heavily influence what we decide to build and work on because we can see which features customers want.

If it's a highly requested feature, it goes into consideration for the roadmap, then we start developing. We listen to our customers and their needs. Feature voting allows us to see the number of customers that want a feature. When a feature gets a lot of up votes, we say, let's make these customers happy. Let's make it a reality for them, from feature request to reality.

What attracted you to work at Comet?​

All the new things that I could learn. It's not just programming, but also actually understanding all the different technologies we back up and the integration partners we work with.

You're handling Windows, you're handling Linux, you're handling Mac, and then there's a range of storage providers. One storage provider can work differently from another.

More often than not at Comet your day-to-day will be different. The endless learning opportunities is what really attracted me.

You were a mentor to Liam, one of Comet’s junior developers. What did you enjoy about being a mentor?​

At the beginning of my career, in my first internship, I had a mentor who said something that really stuck with me – he wanted to be the senior mentor that he wished he had when he was a junior developer. He was a really good mentor for me and I wanted to take that same approach and be a good mentor for Liam.

To me, a good mentor means being available for any questions, teaching best practices, and making the mentee feel comfortable with the overall work, so I wanted to pay it forward.

So whenever Liam has any questions, I'm more than happy to answer and help him learn. When something is going well for Liam, it makes me proud. He's learning and he's making things that help our customers now. It’s great getting to see his work have that impact.

What advice would you give to an aspiring developer?​

Just try to write code as much as you can. Debug for 15 to 30 minutes. If you are struggling or can't figure out the answer, it’s okay to stop and ask for help. Don't be afraid to ask questions. We're more than happy to help.

What's your favorite thing about working at Comet?​

At Comet, the work-life balance is top tier. It's the best company I've ever worked for, including other previous workplaces. No one comes close to the work culture and the people at Comet.

My favorite thing about working at Comet is definitely the people. It's really nice to be working with like-minded people. It's fun. You can talk about your hobbies, video games, and hiking. It’s not always about work.

I really like CometCon, our internal company conference. Especially hearing talks from the different departments that I don’t normally interact with, like Marketing, Customer Success, and Sales. It’s great to learn about other areas of the business outside of the dev teams and the software side of things.

What does your work week look like at Comet?​

We have Monday and Friday in the office where you can have a chat and in-person interactions with people. On Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday we have the option to work from home if we want to. I find those days are good for working on things that need a state of deep focus.

It's really nice because our hours are flexible. As long as you're doing your eight hours per day, if you have errands during the day, you can make up the hours later in the evening.

How would you describe the team culture at Comet?​

It's open. I really like it because everyone feels welcome to ask questions. Even if you are a senior developer or the CTO, it doesn’t mean you have to know everything, you can still ask questions and people are more than happy to answer and help.

People are humble and don’t have egos. For example, I have more years of experience than Jackson. But I find myself sometimes saying, "Oh, I never knew that. Jackson, how did you do that?" Then he will be more than happy to answer my question.

What is your earliest memory of technology?​

When I was in high school, my sister worked for an internet café in Manila in the Philippines. When she took me there, that was the first time I saw computers. We didn’t have one at home. From then on, when we went to the city, I would look forward to going to the internet café to browse the internet and play computer games like Counter Strike, or pinball on Windows XP. I was really fascinated with how computer games work, and how they were connected with other computers.

How did you get into software development?​

When I was in university, I had a conversation with my uncle who worked for the Philippines government’s department of science and technology. He suggested that I should study computer science. It wasn’t on my radar, but after my uncle suggested it, when I took a computer science course, I really enjoyed it. I was fascinated with the programming side of computer science and always looked forward to programming.

Tell us about your journey of becoming a developer.​

I started with an internship in the IT department at a hospital. That was my first time seeing how programming was done in real life and what it’s actually like versus writing code and submitting it to your professor. In the internship, I was writing code and could see when I opened the software that I did that, I contributed to that, so I really enjoyed that feeling.

Then my first developer job was in Manila for a US client, an e-learning platform. That was my first introduction with Git and meddling with the server, configurations and networking, I learned a lot there. I started as an intermediate developer there, then I got promoted to the lead software developer and I was leading the whole team.

When I came to New Zealand, I got hired in the IT department for a geotechnical firm and I learned a lot there, like working with Linux. Then I came to Comet.

What do you like about living in Christchurch?​

I love that Christchurch is in close proximity to pretty much everything. You’re near the sea, the mountains, the hills, hiking and ski areas. I also love that there are a lot of local walking trails around Christchurch and easy access to outdoor activities. Plus, there's also a lot of good restaurants and cafes.

What are your hobbies and interests?​

I love being outdoors, going hiking, and mountain biking. I love exploring the mountains and seeing the views when you’re high up, it’s astonishing. My favorite hike is the Milford Track, it was amazing, nothing else comes close. I’ve done a few of the longer bike trails, the Otago Rail Trail, the Millennium trail, and other bike trails in the Otago area.

Written by Michelle Wong - Marketing Specialist

We’re back with the sixth edition of CometCon, our company-wide internal conference where local and remote team members gather at Comet HQ for a week of collaboration, knowledge-sharing, connection, and (mandatory) fun.

Here are some highlights from our mid-year CometCon:

Speaker Series​

At each CometCon, team members from all departments are invited to submit a talk to present to the company. This time, we had an action-packed speaker lineup with eight presentations from the Developers, Marketing, Customer Success, and Software Testing teams.

CometCon talks are a fantastic platform for sharing insights across the company. Many of the talks focused on learnings from different projects, and how we can improve the product and experience for our Comet community and partners.

Collaboration and Connection​

Between the speaker session, we built in open time blocks for people to connect, brainstorm, and collaborate. These flexible sessions encourage impromptu discussions, in-person meetings, and a bit of downtime to hang out and chat (or play Jenga!).

Throughout the week, our developers also picked up support tickets to help lighten the support workload.

In addition to our company dinner and drinks on Thursday, we hosted a few optional after-hours events, including a team dinner at a burger and BBQ joint (a fan favorite), bouldering, and karaoke. We’re big believers in balancing hard work with both mandatory and optional fun during CometCon.

Celebrations and Milestones​

As always, we finished up the week by voting for the best CometCon talk and celebrating team milestones.

Best CometCon Talk​

• Amy, Testing – Winner
• Rhane, Developer – Runner Up

Comet Anniversary Milestone​

• Natalie, Marketing – 5 years

Special Thanks​

• Louise from WebPros – for joining us as a special guest
• Leandra – for organizing CometCon behind the scenes and keeping everyone happy and fed

That’s a Wrap​

The energy at Comet HQ during CometCon week is always something special. It’s great to have the team together in person, catching up, learning from one another, and working side by side. And of course, the excellent catering kept us fuelled all week, with coffee breaks and shared meals becoming a highlight for great conversations. We’re already looking forward to the next CometCon, stay tuned!

Since launch, our mission at Comet Backup has been to empower IT professionals to protect your organizations. Thousands of you, from MSPs to in-house IT teams, have since used Comet Backup to save the day when disaster strikes.

We know data resiliency is critical to safeguarding your business and the teams that rely on you to keep them safe – but as IT leaders we need to ask the question: how can we ensure our business is not just safe and secure, but growing and thriving?

That focus is at the heart of our decision to join forces with WebPros. We’re excited to announce that Comet Backup has been acquired by WebPros and is now a proud member of their ecosystem, alongside industry heavy hitters like cPanel, Plesk, and WHMCS.

Since launching in 2017, WebPros’ mission has been to integrate web operations – helping businesses establish and grow their digital presence with ease. Now, they’re expanding that mission: empowering digital and IT leaders to thrive in the digital landscape so they can focus on growth instead of tech headaches.

Their suite of leading software solutions is one of the most widely used web enablement ecosystems in the world with over 27 million users, managing over 750,000 servers, and 60 million domains, including over 23 million WordPress websites, across 227 countries.  

Comet Backup protects your business, and WebPros opens doors for your business to grow. Together, our tools enable you to build and scale your organization’s digital presence, securely and profitably.

A shared vision for the future of data protection​

"We are thrilled to welcome Comet Backup into the WebPros family. This is an important extension of our web enablement ecosystem, helping businesses address their backup and storage needs with greater efficiency and reliability,” said Christian Koch, CEO of WebPros.

“It was clear to us from the outset that WebPros’ leading global web enablement ecosystem is the perfect permanent home to take our business to the next level,” said Josh Flores, General Manager of Comet Backup. “The acquisition process itself gave both my team and me full confidence that the WebPros group is an optimal cultural fit for us. Our customers can expect the same great service, now with enhanced support and innovative new features as we continue to invest in the product.”

What does this mean for you?​

With WebPros adding rocket fuel to our capabilities, we’ll be innovating faster and building more. Together, we’ll be able to serve you even better.

Comet Backup will continue to operate as its own platform, with the same mission to provide MSPs and IT teams with the best backup solutions in the galaxy.

What this means for you:

• No disruption to your service: Your Comet account, pricing, backup environment, storage options, integrations and workflows will stay the same.
• More resources and faster product development: With additional resources, we’re accelerating our roadmap to bring you more new features, sooner.
• A stronger customer experience: Better tools and ability to enhance our support systems and increase support coverage across more time zones.

Our commitment to your success remains our top priority. The Comet community means everything to us. This move allows us to invest even more in things that are important to our partners: performance, reliability, and support.

Whether you’ve been with us since the beginning or are a new customer, we’re incredibly grateful to have you on board for the journey ahead.

• Explore our FAQs here
• Read the official announcement on WebPros’ newsroom

If you have questions about your account, feel free to reach out to our Customer Success team by emailing partners@cometbackup.com

We can’t wait to show you what’s coming next. Here’s to an exciting new chapter. 🚀

Comet is now part of WebPros. Read our official announcement here

Q. Will anything change for current Comet Backup customers?​

Nothing changes for your business. Everything in your Comet account stays the same. Your backup environment, storage options, integrations, and workflows will keep running just as they do today. In the near future, you can look forward to enhanced support and some exciting new features.

Q. Will my current plan or pricing change?​

No, your current plan and pricing will stay the same. If anything ever changes, we’ll let you know well in advance.

Q. How does this acquisition benefit Comet customers and product development?​

With additional resources, this acquisition will speed up the development of new features and improve the ones we already have, using our combined skills to bring more value to our customers.

Q. Will my data/privacy/security be affected?​

No, your data, privacy, and security will not be affected. We remain fully committed to protecting your data and maintaining exemplary security standards.

Q. Will support quality or responsiveness change?​

Technical support will remain the same, and in fact, we expect it to improve. With WebPros' assistance, one of our top priorities is enhancing our support systems and increasing support coverage across more time zones.

Q. Will Comet Backup integrate with new tools or platforms?​

That’s the plan! We’re exploring more integrations to make your backup and IT workflow even more seamless. Stay tuned.

Q. Who do I contact if I have questions?​

As always, you can reach out to our customer success team by emailing partners@cometbackup.com, or raise a support ticket. We’re here for you and happy to help.

Q. What’s next for Comet Backup?​

We’re reaching for the stars. With WebPros adding rocket fuel to our capabilities, we’ll be innovating faster and building more to bring you the best backup solutions in the galaxy. We’re excited to have you on board for the journey ahead.

Written by Callum Sinclair - Product Engineering Manager.

Comet 25.5.0 Hyperion​

Comet 25.5.0 Hyperion, our latest Quarterly release, brings 3 new features and 9 enhancements, including automatic Storage Vault unlocking, automatically switching jobs to use on-disk indexes, a new option to backup everything in a Microsoft 365 domain, and more.

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

Why Hyperion?​

This Quarterly release is named after Saturn's moon Hyperion. Fun fact: Hyperion is potato shaped and its deeply cratered surface resembles a sponge. Hyperion rotates chaotically, tumbling unpredictably through space as it orbits Saturn.

Webinar announcement​

Join us for our Quarterly webinar on Tuesday 10 June (4pm ET / 1pm PT). Comet's CTO, Mason, and Product Engineering Manager, Callum, will cover all the latest product updates, with a live question-and-answer session at the end.

New Feature: Automatic Storage Vault unlocking​

Storage Vault locking is a core part of Comet that ensures backup and retention passes can run safely on multiple devices sharing the same Storage Vault. A Storage Vault is only locked when critical changes are being made to the data in the Storage Vault, such as when unused data is being removed as part of a retention pass.

As part of our efforts to improve the experience of Comet, we have added functionality to automatically change Storage Vault access keys for some of our supported storage providers. This allows admins to unlock compatible Storage Vaults without the risk of data loss.

The following Storage Vault types are currently supported:

• Comet Storage
• Amazon AWS
• Wasabi

Storage Vaults can also be automatically unlocked. This can be configured in user policy settings. This is great for admins who want to resolve Storage Vault locking issues without introducing a data loss risk.

New Feature: Automatically Switch Jobs To Use On-Disk Indexes​

Comet makes use of in-memory indexes to optimise backup and retention pass jobs to maintain a list of where the data is in the Storage Vault. For larger Storage Vaults, this can lead to a large amount of data held in memory. On devices that have a lower amount of RAM, this can cause a job to fail as there is not enough available memory to complete the job. Comet's solution is to store the indexes on-disk using temporary files instead. This is because devices can often have more free disk space than available RAM.

When a scheduled backup or retention pass requires more RAM than is available, Comet will now automatically switch to store the indexes using temporary files on disk.

Enhancement: New option to back up everything in a Microsoft 365 domain​

We are introducing the new "Back up everything" option for Microsoft 365 backups. This option provides a simple way to back up everything within a domain, including any accounts that are added later.

To back up everything with exceptions, users should instead create a group in Microsoft 365 and have the group auto-assign to new accounts. Users to be excluded can be removed from the group, and this group can then be selected in Comet.

Enhancement: Linux Disk Image driver now installs automatically​

Comet uses a custom Linux kernel driver backupsnap61 to snapshot a block device during a Linux Disk Image Protected Item backup.

In previous releases, backupsnap61 had to be installed manually using the backupsnap61-install.sh script found in the Comet Backup install directory.

Without backupsnap61 installed, Comet can't guarantee it can get exclusive read access to a block device. This will appear as a warning in a Linux Disk Image backup job log.

Now, backupsnap61 is installed automatically by Comet to ensure a snapshot driver is always available before starting a Linux Disk Image backup.

Enhancement: Bulk Cancel Jobs using the Comet Management Console​

From the Comet Management Console, admins are able to monitor and manage thousands of devices and backup jobs. To continue Comet's mission to make managing backups as easy as possible, it is now possible to cancel running jobs in bulk from the Job Logs page on a Comet Management Console.

This is an effective way to stop all currently running backup jobs with one click.

Enhancement: Updated Translations​

Comet has updated in-app translations for 13 languages. These are Danish, German, Spanish, French, Hebrew, Croatian, Italian, Dutch, Portuguese (Brazil), Portuguese (Europe), Russian, Polish and Thai.