Written by Callum Sinclair - Product Engineering Manager.
"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 June 2024.
There were three Comet releases during June - two in the Voyager release series, plus one update for our Mimas release series.
We've landed a few large and exciting features:
Faster Measurement of Storage Vault Sizes
Enforcing Storage Vault Quotas is an important feature of Comet, providing our Managed Service Providers (MSPs) with the ability to restrict how much data a customer is allowed to back up. This feature offers flexibility to accommodate a wide range of business cases and ensures that resources are used efficiently.
In Comet version 24.6.1 and later, we've made a significant enhancement to how we measure the size of stored data in a Storage Vault. This improvement dramatically reduces the time required to start a back up job.
In our test cases, for a Storage Vault with a few terabytes of data stored it would take 10 or more minutes to measure how much data was stored. In Comet 24.6.1 this now takes a few seconds. This change benefits all our customers by enabling faster job initiation, which in turn means that jobs complete quicker.
This improvement not only enhances the user experience by reducing wait times but also optimizes resource usage, allowing our MSPs to provide even better service to their clients. We're excited about this update and the positive impact it will have on your back up operations.
Software Build Role Tenant Settings
Software Build Role is a Comet Server feature that is responsible for generating client software installers of Comet. When enabled, it activates the Download Client Software page in the Comet Server web interface.
We have now added the ability to enable or disable the Software Build Role per tenant, providing greater flexibility for Managed Service Providers (MSPs) using Comet. Additionally, we've introduced support to configure whether an admin account can change these settings via policy.
These enhancements offer MSPs more control over their software build configurations, allowing for tailored management and improved service offerings.
Constellation Role Memory Improvements
Constellation Role is a Comet Server feature that provides insight across multiple Comet Servers and is essential tool for automatically removing unused storage. It works by verifying if data in a storage bucket belongs to an active user account on a Comet Server and removes data with no associated user, which can occur if a user is deleted without deleting their stored data.
In older versions of Comet, Constellation Role required a large amount of RAM to perform this function. However, in Comet 24.6.0, we have significantly reduced the RAM usage for Constellation Role, resulting in substantial speed and resource improvements. This means Constellation can prune larger amounts of data faster, and often more reliably.
This has a real benefit for our customers using Cloud Based storage, as removing unused data when it is no longer required is cost effective in the long run.
IP Rate Limiting Added to Comet Server Interface
To improve the usability of our IP rate limiting controls, we have added the ability to configure them in our Comet Server web interface. Previously this feature was only configureable via directly editing the config file of the Comet Server.
By configuring IP rate limits you can control the maximum bandwidth for IP addresses using regular expressions and set limits in bytes per second. Multiple rules can be defined, creating rate-limiting domains that match incoming requests. Rate limits apply separately to ingress and egress traffic, allowing simultaneous upload and download limits.
IP rate limiting can help maintain consistent performance and fair bandwidth usage across all users, and with our latest Comet release, it is even easier to configure.
Impossible Cloud Webinar
If you haven't seen it, check out our recent blog post announcing our Impossible Cloud Integration as well as our joint webinar on Premier Cloud Storage & Backup for Europe’s MSPs on Wednesday, July 17th at 11am CET (Central European Time).
New Charging Model for Hyper-V and VMware Protected Items
You will notice that Hyper-V and VMware Guests will be charged daily per Protected Item from July.
This updated charging model can lead to a reduction in your overall bill. By charging per day per Protected Item, we align costs more closely with actual usage, potentially lowering your expenses.
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!
