This article covers what's new our latest Quarterly release series from December 2023 to February 2024. Read the release notes here.
Comet 24.2.0 Mimas
We're very pleased to announce our latest Quarterly release series - Comet 24.2 Mimas. This is the the latest entry in our quarterly rollup series, that branches off from our main rolling Voyager development into a fixed target for you to qualify and build your service offering upon.
Mimas is named after a moon of Saturn, which in turn takes its name from an ancient Greek mythological giant. Mimas is relatively small compared to Earth's moon, with a diameter of about 396 kilometers (246 miles). Its composition is primarily made up of water ice with a small amount of rocky material. Its most distinguishing feature is a giant impact crater which stretches a third of the way across the face of the moon, making it look like the Death Star from "Star Wars."
For users coming from the previous 23.11 Saturn quarterly release series, Mimas adds 3 features and 15 enhancements, including Dark Mode for the Comet Server web interface and a Debian installer for the Comet Backup desktop app as mentioned below.
The full set of changes can be found in the release notes.
Webinar announcement
If you'd prefer to watch rather than read, we're hosting a webinar to discuss this new quarterly release and all the new changes. Please register before we go live on Tuesday 12 March (4pm ET / 1pm PT) to catch up on all the latest Comet news with Comet's CTO, Mason - and as usual, there will be time for a live question-and-answer session at the end of the presentation.
As well as that, we have many more videos available on our YouTube channel, including guides on getting started with Comet, individual features, demonstrations with our technology partners, and webinars for previous quarterly software releases.
Dark Mode for the Comet Server
To continue our visual improvements to the Comet Server web interface we have added Dark Mode support. This completely overhauls the look and feel of the Comet Server and automatically applies based on the theme you have chosen for your system. Next time you have a chance check it out by logging into your Comet Server and clicking the new toggle button in the top right corner.
Light Mode:
Dark Mode:
Debian Installer for the Comet Backup desktop app
To make it easier to install Comet on your Debian Linux installs, we are pleased to announce our new Debian Installer. Our new installer will walk you through all of the required steps to install Comet. Comet is installed as a systemd service meaning it will now automatically start when your device boots.
Once installed you can still upgrade Comet remotely using the Comet Server web interface meaning you now have multiple options for managing, installing and upgrading Comet on your Linux devices.
Improved S3-compatible Object Lock Performance
Object Lock is a great way to add additional security to your data stored in an S3-compatible Storage Vault. This month we've been hard at work finding ways to optimize Comet's performance when backing up to an S3-compatible Storage Vaults. We have found a way to significantly decrease the time taken to extend the object lock duration on objects stored in the vault. As a result, backup jobs to an S3-compatible Storage Vault now complete up to 16 times faster than before.
Custom Headers added for Custom Remote Buckets
Comet has a great list of S3-compatible storage providers that we have storage templates for. To add better support for other S3-compatible storage providers you can now add Customer Headers to a Custom Remote Bucket in the Comet Server web interface. This greatly expands your options for which provider you would like to use as you can now add additional data such as long lived authentication tokens as part of the request Comet makes when connecting to the storage provider.
Faster Logins between the Comet Account Portal and Comet Hosted
Once Comet Hosted is running our new 24.2.0 Mimas release, we will enable the overhauled login button for Comet Hosted servers from the Comet Account Portal.
The new login button shares credentials between the Comet Account Portal and Comet Hosted meaning you no longer need to remember two sets of passwords. Because of this we have been able to solve all of the failing cases and can provide you with a reliable login experience for your Comet Hosted servers.
Once you've logged in with the new system for the first time, when you log out of your Comet Hosted Server you will see a new Login with Comet Account Portal appear on the login page. This allows you to jump straight back into your Comet Hosted server faster than ever before. This button will only appear on web browser sessions that remember you've clicked the login button from the Comet Account Portal first to ensure we don't show Comet branding to unexpected users of your Comet Hosted Servers.
VM Pricing Adjustments
At Comet, we are committed to continuously improving our products and services to meet your evolving data protection needs. In order to do this, occasionally we find it necessary to make adjustments to our product offerings. We are updating our pricing structure in order to further standardize our virtual machine protected item types – VMware and Hyper-V.
Effective February 28th 2024, we are introducing a new unlimited guest license option for VMware, priced at $39. If you have 8 or more VMware guests backing up, you will automatically get the unlimited pricing; no action needed on your part. This change supports your business growth as you scale and add VM deployments.
Also as of February 28th 2024, we are dropping the $2 base charge for Hyper-V. You will only pay the booster charge for all virtual environment backups (both VMware and Hyper-V) going forward.
To bring our virtual machine licensing into alignment, starting February 28th 2024, Hyper-V licensing will be charged at $3 per guest or $24 for unlimited guests per host.