What's New?​

"What's New?" is a new blog series covering recent changes to Comet in more detail. This article covers the latest changes in Comet Voyager over May 2022.

May was a busy month for us at Comet - we've continued to expand our development team, and we are making great progress improving Comet. We've also grown our customer success team and support team, so if you see some new faces in the support tickets, please give them a warm welcome!

22.5.0 "Lysithea" release​

The headline news of this quarter is that we've rolled up the 22.3.x Voyager series into a new long-term-support release. If you're not comfortable with weekly Voyager software updates, we strongly recommend the quarterly rollup series to build your business upon.

We're hosting a webinar for the release on June 7th - please pre-register your interest here to get a notification before we go live.

The codenames for Comet follow a consistent naming pattern, as we voyage from the inner solar system (Comet 17.2.0 "Mercury"), through the inner planets, Earth, Mars, the asteroid belt, Jupiter, and now looking at the moons of Jupiter. "Lysithea" is the tenth moon of Jupiter; it was discovered by Seth Barnes Nicholson in 1938, and is named after the Lysithea of Greek mythology, one of Zeus' lovers.

You can read the 22.5.0 "Lysithea" release changelog here, or if you've been following the monthly What's New blog posts or the weekly Voyager series, please read on for a bit more in-depth look.

Cloud Storage update​

It's been an exciting month for cloud storage providers. Just a quick refresher that Comet performs at its best when you minimize the latency from the end-customer through to the storage location, so when choosing a cloud provider, we recommend selecting a storage region as close as possible to the end customer.

Our friends at Wasabi have continued to launch new regions, with the latest addition being Australia (launched on May 9th). At our Comet offices in New Zealand, we're particularly pleased with the latency and performance of the new Australia region. The new region is automatically detected in Comet's software, and no region-specific settings are required.

Another new storage provider hitting the market is IDrive e2. This is an S3-compatible service following in the proud tradition of naming cloud storage as a single letter and number! IDrive e2 offers storage regions in the US and EU, high performance, and an industry-leading price of $4/TB/mo, with free egress and 90% off for the first year. They also join an exclusive club of providers that implement bucket versioning for storage immutability - the perfect defense against ransomware.

IDrive e2 works very well with Comet, and you can expect to hear more about them in the future. Mention Comet Backup when signing up to get 1TB free storage for 30 days.

Requestable Storage for AWS and IAM-compatible​

Comet Backup supports many different cloud storage providers if you bring your own storage credentials. If you have configured the customer's Comet Backup app to back up directly to a cloud storage provider, you should avoid reusing storage credentials across customers. For each customer, you should either create new cloud storage credentials manually; or proxy the data through Comet Server Storage Role; or ideally, have Comet Server provision new cloud storage credentials automatically. We call this the "Request Storage Vault" or "Requestable" system.

Previous versions of Comet Server supported this "Requestable" provisioning for Backblaze B2, Wasabi Cloud Storage, and custom HTTP integrations. We're very happy to announce that Comet Server extends this support to Amazon AWS and to custom IAM-compatible cloud services.

There are a lot of S3-compatible cloud storage providers on the market, but having "Requestable" support to automatically provision private credentials is a more advanced level of integration than just S3-compatible, and there's not yet an industry standard for providers to use. We're working with individual storage partners to expand our "Requestable" integrations over time.

Hourly schedules​

When configuring a backup job schedule in Comet, you can now tell Comet to back up hourly, but only at certain times of day:

The main two use cases for this feature are

• to back up only 9am to 5pm, Monday to Friday, when you know the customer's computer is on and working, to avoid any meaningless Missed backup job reports; and
• the exact opposite, to back up from 5pm to 9am when you know the customer isn't interactively using their computer.

It's long since been possible to select an hourly schedule, or a daily schedule for weekdays, or individual backup times - but rolling them all together is a nice improvement that makes this kind of configuration much simpler.

This was a popular suggestion from our Feature Voting page. If you haven't checked out our Feature Voting page, i'd really recommend it. We look at this system often to help guide our priorities, so it's a great way to help shape the future of Comet.

Synology​

Our Synology .spk package was first publicly released in February this year, as part of Comet 21.12.7. Since then, we've continued to improve the installer and our compatibility.

The platform compatibility has been extended to include more types of ARM CPU, including Synology NAS models based on the Armada, Comcerto, and Monaco platforms. The Synology package has been improved to better understand NAS timezones, provide clearer warnings on login failure, and to calculate device IDs in a more repeatable way. You should find that the installer just works in many more cases.

In the DSM 7 version of the installer, some additional steps are required to grant file permissions to the Comet Backup app. Previously, these steps were only listed in our official documentation, and if you are white-labeling the Comet Backup software for your end-users, then it is difficult to share a link to this information. The latest versions of the installer now include a new built-in help guide explaining how to configure the necessary permission settings for backup.

All of the changes mentioned above are included in our latest quarterly release 22.5.0 "Lysithea".

Comet Server Web interface​

The tables in the Comet Server web interface now properly remember their state when refreshing the page or using the back button. This may sound like a subtle change, but it has had an immediate impact in making the Comet Server web interface much more intuitive and easy to use.

This was a long-standing request from our Feature Voting system. It's taken a while to get to this point because Comet Server's web interface is an SPA (Single Page App). This has been an excellent technical foundation for us, as our development team reuses the official Comet Server API, ensuring that it is stress-tested and has broad feature coverage, allowing any external API developers to get the same experience we do internally. However, this API-first design has meant we're not technically using the web browser's traditional Back button handling, and that has resulted in minor quirks like this. Thank you all for your patience with us as we developed this feature.

As of Comet Server 22.3.6, and available now in Comet 22.5.0 "Lysithea", when using the browser back button, all table settings will be restored exactly how they were, including rows-per-page, sorting, current page number, search term, and custom column selection. Your rows-per-page setting will also be preserved globally, even when you log out and log in again.

Your custom column selections will be preserved for each individual table, even when you log out and log in again, with your current version of Comet Server. However, if the Comet Server version changes, the custom column selections will be reset, because new versions of Comet Server might have introduced a different set of available columns.

As well as this improvement to the table system, there were many other small improvements to the Comet Server web interface this month. For example, "Internal Error" popup messages can now show you the information directly in more cases, such as when an administrator tries to use the "Request Storage Vault" feature.

Self-backup​

Comet Server has a feature called Server Self-Backup to create backup copies of Comet Server's own configuration, such as the cometd.cfg and comet-users.db files.

The Self-Backup feature does not use the full chunking and deduplication infrastructure like a regular Comet Backup job, because if the Comet Server itself experiences an outage to the point where you need to restore from backup, then this chunking and deduplication infrastructure is unavailable. Instead, the Server Self-Backup only creates simple passworded zip files in any supported storage location. This self-contained design is a way to break the "chicken and egg" problem compared to using the full Comet infrastructure.

For providers with very large Comet Servers with thousands of user accounts and millions of job logs, the overhead of performing a Self-Backup might be considerable. The latest version of Comet Server includes two key improvements to the Server Self-Backup feature to reduce the CPU load in these cases.

Firstly, you can use the new slider component to adjust the compression level, to make a trade-off between 'Faster' compression with lower CPU impact but a larger file-size, and 'Smaller file-size' with a higher CPU impact.

If your Comet Server is hosted on a cloud provider where you pay for both CPU usage and for storage usage, you might find that the storage cost of a larger Self-Backup is actually lower than the CPU cost of performing more compression.

In addition, a new option has been added to exclude the job database from the Comet Server Self-Backup.

The job database is almost always the largest component of a Self-Backup, responsible for as much as 90% of the archive size and CPU impact. It's still important to back up this job database. However if it was excluded, then perhaps the other parts of the Comet Server configuration could be backed up more frequently. Excluding the job database also makes the generated zip archives smaller and more accessible when you only want to restore the user-profile settings or the server configuration.

For large partners in this situation, we recommend having two Self-Backup schedules: one frequent schedule that excludes the job database, and another less frequent backup that includes all databases.

Restore as Archive​

When you restore data in Comet, you can restore files and folders directly; you can restore Office 365 emails back to the cloud; you can stream restore data into another program without spooling (great for MySQL); you can restore to nowhere, just to test that Comet is working; and, you have the option to restore as an archive format.

Multiple archive formats are available, including the ubiquitous zip, and we might as well have stopped there - but there is a time and place for other options. In particular, Linux users are better served by a compressed tar archive that can be used with standard system tools, without needing to install a Zip program.

This month, the Restore as Archive feature was expanded to support tar.zst, the latest type of tar format that uses zstd compression instead of gzip. This results in a smaller filesize while also being faster to compress and to decompress. The ordinary Linux untar command (tar xaf file.tar.zst) works with these files since GNU tar 1.31, which can be found in Debian 11 "Bullseye", Ubuntu 21.10 "Impish Indri", Fedora 30, and RHEL 9.

The .tgz and .tzst file extensions are now understood as common aliases for the .tar.gz and .tar.zst extensions, and the target directory for restore is now created automatically, aligning this behavior with how an everyday File and Folder restore works.

Tenant support​

Comet Server can be configured for multi-tenancy, to give each of your partners an isolated zone within your Comet Server for their own individual customers. We've seen this feature used for reseller support and for hosted service offerings. Tenants (previously known as Organizations) have been a standard feature of Comet Server for a long time now, and we're continuing to improve the support.

When logged in to the Comet Server web interface as the top-level administrator, looking at a cross-tenant customer, you will find that the available Policy options now more accurately reflect the tenant's policies, instead of showing unusable options from other tenants. The "Request Storage Vault" dropdown option also now correctly finds the tenant's list of "Requestable" storage providers. These changes should make it much more seamless to manage a tenant's customers from the top-level account.

If you're a software developer making use of the Comet Server API to manage your Tenants, you might be interested to know that these improvements come thanks to some new API parameters in our AdminAddUser, AdminPoliciesList, AdminRequestStorageVaultProviders, and related APIs. New features for the API are generally mentioned in the official changelogs, but you can also stay up-to-date by following the changelogs for our PHP SDK and Ruby SDK on GitHub.

Translations​

Internationalization is a high priority for us at Comet. It enables you to serve your customers in local markets much more effectively.

Comet is available in 13 fully translated languages, and the Comet 22.5.0 release includes updated translations for 10 of those - Danish, German, Spanish, French, Croatian, Italian, Portuguese (Brazil), Portuguese (Europe), Russian, and Hebrew. All of Comet, from the end-user desktop app and customer-facing email reports, through to the admin section and the new user guide from last month, can be used in translation.

We've also found- and fixed- many small gaps where the underlying English was showing through, such as the pagination footer for tables in the Comet Server web interface.

Our staff mostly only speak English, so we do hire translation contractors for the bulk of this work - but over the years we have consistently found that the best-quality translations come from our customers, who have a full understanding of both the software and the IT / MSP backup industry. If you see a typo in our translations, or if you want to help translate Comet into a new language, we'd love your contribution and it couldn't be easier to get started - just head to our GitHub page and follow the instructions.

In particular this month, I'd like to thank one of our partners for getting the Chinese (Traditional) localization started! This will be our 14th language.

Upcoming Webinar​

If you'd prefer to watch rather than read, I'm hosting a live webinar to discuss the latest 22.5.0 "Lysithea" release and everything in it since our previous quarterly release. Please register for a notification before we go live on June 7th to catch up on all the latest Comet news with me - there will a free live Q&A session after 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, and webinars for previous quarterly software releases.

What's New?​

"What's New?" is a new blog series covering recent changes to Comet in more detail. This article covers the latest changes in Comet Voyager over April 2022.

Important security fix with the Tenants feature​

In early April, we became aware of a security issue affecting the Tenant feature in the Self-Hosted Comet Server version 22.3.1, 22.2.0 and all earlier versions. A certain API could allow administrators in one Tenant to see user profile details belonging to user accounts from another Tenant.

We discovered this issue internally, and there is no evidence to suggest that any misuse has taken place. All partners known to be using this feature have been notified directly.

Comet 22.3.2 and Comet 22.2.1 were released on April 6, 2022 to fix this issue. We recommend upgrading at your earliest opportunity.

Direct codesigning for macOS​

Comet Server allows you to customize the branding for the client software, including changing the branding, logos, text, EULA, and icon for both the installer and the application itself.

When you download Comet Backup from your Comet Server web interface, Comet Server generates a custom installer on-demand. This custom installer contains all your branding as well as the built-in URL for your Comet Server, so no extra configuration is needed by the end-user.

However, newly generated installers are not immediately trusted by operating system security measures such as SmartScreen on Windows or Gatekeeper on macOS. Windows users are likely to be familiar with the blue SmartScreen dialog and practised in clicking the "Run anyway" button, but for macOS users, you may be surprised to learn that there is no such "Run anyway" button:

It's possible to bypass the dialog by right-clicking the *.pkg installer and choosing 'Open'. Then the dialog will include a 'Run anyway' button. However, this is a major user experience roadblock for macOS clients.

A better way to solve this solution is to codesign the installer. You can configure this on both Windows and Linux from inside your Comet Server, in the settings page, on the "Client branding" tab, using the "Codesigning" button at the bottom. For Windows, it's as simple as purchasing a certificate from one of our recommended vendors and uploading it to the "Authenticode" tab.

For macOS, the process was much more complicated. The tools used to perform macOS codesigning could only run on a real Mac machine. Comet Server required you to purchase a certificate from Apple, but in addition – to also to buy a Mac (or rent a cloud Mac), configure it for SSH, and set up some very careful permissions in order to allow Comet Server to remotely SSH into it to sign the installer *.pkg file. This was difficult for our partners (and difficult for our support team!).

Thanks to recent developments, we are pleased to announce that a Mac is no longer required for this process. You can simply purchase the certificate and upload it to this screen; Comet Server will handle all the necessary signing steps internally. We have further details on how to purchase an Apple certificate and register an App Store Connect ID in our full documentation.

This is a significant simplification of how Comet (and other software vendors) will be able to deploy macOS software going forward.

New Getting Started guide​

When using a Comet Server for the first time – or giving access to a reseller Tenant for the first time – Comet Server used to show a small text box with instructions on how to download the Comet Backup client app and run your first backup job. To help streamline this process, we've expanded this first-use guide into a larger sidebar that walks you through each step individually:

This guide appears the first time an admin logs into a new server and can be dismissed at any time. It walks you through all the first steps of running a Comet Server, including configuring storage settings, adding a first user account, downloading and installing the Comet Backup desktop client, ensuring the user account has registered a device and a Protected Item, and running a backup job.

The progress through these steps is refreshed automatically using a live connection to the Comet Server.

If you're an established Comet Server administrator, you won't see any changes in this area, but if you onboard new reseller Tenants or if you create a new Comet Server then we hope it helps you walk through the process a little more smoothly.

Coming soon: New Quarterly release​

Once every quarter, we roll up all our Voyager development into a new long-term support release. The current quarterly release series, 22.2 "Elara" was planned for release in late February, and received one dedicated point release to fix issues over its lifetime. We are now closely approaching the end of its patch support period. You should expect to hear from us very soon about what's coming up next!

After each quarterly release gets superseded by another, the old quarterly release will receive ticket and critical support only, with most issues resolved by encouraging users to move to the current series.

What's New?​

"What's New?" is a new blog series covering recent changes to Comet in more detail. This article covers the latest changes in Comet Voyager over March 2022.

Time since job end​

Comet Server's web interface has a filter system that can be used for searching job history, and for generating backup job reports containing a summary table of that job history. The query system is very flexible, supporting boolean operators (and/or/not/nor), sub-clauses, grouping, and drag-and-drop rearranging. You can filter for jobs based on many different properties including the job's status (e.g. Success / Failure / Quota Exceeded), its classification type (e.g. Backup / Restore / Retention pass), its upload and download size, usernames, Protected Item and Storage Vault IDs, and many more.

This allows you to construct advanced email reports such as "Email me immediately if a job fails, plus a weekly summary" as described in our email report recipes section.

When using a custom job history search to construct an email report, it's important that the result set has a time bound on it. Without a time bound clause, the system will produce a report containing jobs from all time. The 'Preview' button on this dialog is helpful in ensuring the result looks correct.

In Comet 22.3.0 and later, there is a new available clause to filter by 'Time since job end', joining the existing 'Time since job start' filter. In some cases, using one filter or the other in your scheduled email reports could cause you to miss out on seeing jobs that take longer than the period interval. We advise following the documented recipe for best results.

Bulk upgrade campaign improvements​

Comet Server allows you to remotely deploy a software upgrade to your live-connected user accounts. You can do this for a single user from their live-connected actions dialog, or you can deploy the upgrade in bulk via the Bulk Upgrade Campaign menu item. The bulk upgrade campaign takes care of intelligently waiting for devices to come online and avoiding interrupting running backup jobs, giving you an overall percentage indicator of the software uptake.

In Comet 22.3.0 there are more options to control the behavior of the bulk upgrade campaign:

Firstly, you can use our query system - mentioned above - to filter and select which devices should be considered eligible to receive the software update. If you are troubleshooting issues on a specific platform, you can restrict the update to individual device operating systems. You can filter by username and other properties too, allowing granular mass deployment without needing to resort to individually sending updates via the live-connected actions dialog.

Another new option is to control whether or not running jobs should be interrupted. The bulk upgrade campaign normally avoids sending a software-upgrade message signal to the client if a job is running, preferring to complete a backup job with old software, rather than have new software and no backup job. Having the client be one or two versions behind the Comet Server is not a problem as we maintain a strong commitment to backwards compatibility.

But if the customer's job schedules are running back-to-back, or they are infrequently online, then the campaign system might not find any reasonable opportunity to deploy the upgrade, and the devices could fall significantly far behind. It's now possible to override this behavior and ask for the bulk upgrade to be deployed regardless of any running jobs. The software installer will terminate all Comet's running processes as part of the upgrade.

These new settings are all optional and default to the previous behavior, of sending the update to all devices while not interrupting any running jobs.

Find matching Storage Vault addresses​

Comet Server is split into multiple roles, including the Auth Role - where user accounts log in - and the Storage Role - one place where a customer might upload data to. These are conceptually independent parts of the Comet Server and can be enabled or disabled as required.

When you log in to the Comet Backup desktop app, if you check the 'advanced options' checkbox, you can see the server address that Comet is logging into. This is the Auth Role address. If you have a Comet-type Storage Vault in the customer's settings, you can check the hostname field for that Storage Vault. This is the Storage Role address.

In small installations, it's likely that Auth Role and Storage Role will be both enabled on a single server. If you are using direct-to-cloud storage, you might not even be using Storage Role. In larger installations, the Auth Role and Storage Role can be decoupled, to allow scaling them independently. For instance, you could have one single Auth Role server for all customers, with many dozens of Storage Role servers. In that case, the two hostname fields mentioned would have different content inside.

The Role system is simple and flexible, but managing these URLs at scale can be difficult. If you have to perform a server migration, such as a replication failover, the easiest way to do it is to change what DNS points to, instead of changing a lot of login-URL settings and Storage Vault hostname settings.

But sometimes these changes must be made. It is possible to remotely redirect a user to a different Auth Role login address via the live connection action dialog:

As well as the Auth Role login hostname, it is possible to change a user's Comet-type (i.e. Storage Role) Storage Vault hostname remotely by editing their Storage Vault settings. There is a way to do this in bulk via the 'Advanced' options > 'Bulk Replace Addresses' page. This page allows you to find-and-replace Comet-type Storage Vault hostnames across your entire user base.

In Comet 22.3.0, this page has gained separate 'Find' and 'Find and replace' modes:

You can now use the new 'Find' option to perform a dry-run, to see which customers are using any given Storage Vault URL. This is a helpful safety feature before switching to 'Find and replace'; and, it can also help with troubleshooting certain types of Constellation Role error message.

Simpler My Servers page​

When you visit account.cometbackup.com, you can use the 'My Servers' page to manage your Self-Hosted and Comet-Hosted servers. Previously these were displayed on two separate tabs; we have now streamlined this page to show all your servers together, regardless of where they are hosted.

If you have a mix of environments (e.g. a primary a Comet-Hosted server and additional self-hosted servers for on-prem requirements; or, a primary self-hosted server and a test environment Comet-Hosted server) then you'll find it easier to see an overview of all your Comet Server infrastructure at a single glance.

Comet job information in custom command environment variables​

Comet supports running commands as part of each backup jobs. You can configure a command to run before or after the backup job, or even when a disk snapshot is thawed. Custom commands can be attached to the Protected Item (e.g. for creating archives or database dumps for backup), to the Storage Vault (e.g. to supply extra login commands), or to an individual schedule (e.g. to shut down the PC after the backup job completes).

The commands are run as part of the job, and the output of the custom command is included in the job report. If your custom command returns a non-zero exit code, the job report will be marked as unsuccessful.

In Comet 22.3.0, the commands are run with additional environment variables available. These environment variables help you integrate Comet with your other systems. For example, you could use an After command that signals to your RMM software if a job has completed, including the device ID, job ID, and in-progress job status.

Export Device ID​

Comet Server has a comprehensive API - anything that you can do in the Comet Server web interface can be done via our API. The API makes use of JSON over HTTP, and it's simple to interact with - we have sample code and SDKs for several programming languages.

When you are integrating Comet with other software, you will find that the customer's device running Comet Backup is always represented by a "Device ID". This identifier is automatically generated based on a private set of hardware and software identifiers. It is designed to remain stable throughout the lifetime of the device and be a consistent way to identify it. However, the proprietary nature of its generation means it can be difficult to correlate Comet's device IDs from the Comet Server API with any other identifiers running on the same PC.

For instance if you have RMM scripts running on a customer's PC, you may want to know the current PC's Comet Device ID in order to make API calls related to the current device.

On Windows, this has been possible up until now by reading the HKLM\Software\backup-tool\DeviceIdentificationID registry key. This key is created when Comet's services start up and is an easy way to correlate the current device with the Comet API.

However, macOS and Linux devices don't have a Registry that we can use in the same way. Comet 22.3.0 adds a new platform-independent technique for retrieving the Device ID, by running the backup-tool info device-id command. This command outputs the current device ID on stdout and should always have the same result as reading the registry key.

This feature is highly useful for ISV (Independent Software Vendor) partners who are looking to integrate Comet more closely with their other software utilities.

Wasabi integration improvements​

Our partners at Wasabi are continuing to roll out new supported storage regions. Comet performs at its best when you minimize the latency from the end-customer through to the storage location, so when choosing a cloud provider, we recommend selecting a storage region as close as possible to the end customer.

Comet 22.3.1 adds support for the automatically detecting buckets in Wasabi's latest ca-central-1 region. Because Wasabi bucket names form a global namespace, Comet can generally autodetect the region without it having to be manually specified in the Storage Vault or Storage Role settings.

Elara rollup release​

As with every quarter, we released our latest Comet 22.2.0 'Elara' release on March 8th. This release rolled up all the features from the 21.12.x Voyager series into a new long-term-support release that we will continue to patch and support. Some of the feature highlights include a new Settings page in the Comet Server web interface; support for WebAuthn as a 2FA method; and single file or folder restore for Disk Image backups. All users of the previous quarterly series 21.11.x 'Himalia' and earlier are encouraged to upgrade, but we’re happy for them to continue using older quarterly versions if they are not experiencing any issues.

Comet Elara takes its name from another moon of Jupiter - It is the eighth largest Jovian satellite, and is named after Elara, one of Zeus' lovers. It was discovered on January 5th 1905.

Thanks to everyone who joined us for the release launch webinar - if you missed this coverage of all the new features from Elara, you can watch the replay on our YouTube channel.

Synology improvements​

We recently added support for installing Comet Backup on the Synology NAS platform using a *.spk file. This support debuted with Comet 21.12.7 and we have been continuing to improve it since then. In the latest 22.3.x 'Voyager' series, you'll find improvements for installation on DSM 6; reduced job log verbosity on DSM 7 with @eaDir paths; and better support for the AdminBrandingAvailablePlatforms API.

Thanks for reading - stay tuned for our next monthly update summary, and if you would prefer to watch instead of read, we have a large number of update summaries available on our YouTube channel.

Mason Giles, CTO

What's New?​

"What's New?" is a new blog series covering recent changes to Comet in more detail. This article covers the latest changes in Comet Voyager over February 2022.

Synology client installer​

Comet Backup now has an SPK package installer available for Synology NAS devices. It supports both DSM 6 and DSM 7 firmware versions. This is a great way to ensure your NAS devices are backed up in a consistent way with all your other Comet infrastructure.

As with the existing Windows, macOS, and Linux Comet Backup client installers, you can get started with Synology by downloading your SPK package from the Comet Server downloads page.

Until now, it has been possible to install the Linux version of Comet Backup on a Synology device if you enabled SSH access to it. This was a complicated process, and upgrades to the DSM firmware would often cause the installed Comet Backup client to get deleted. Using the spk package avoids all these problems - the installation process is much simpler as your branded Comet client can be installed entirely via the Synology web interface through the package manager.

In DSM 6, Comet has full access to the system to back up and restore files. In DSM 7, Synology introduced a sandboxing system for packages to improve security. As a result, you will need to explicitly grant the Comet Backup app access to your storage volumes after installation. Please check the documentation closely when going through this process for the first time.

At this stage the new Synology installer is being released at no additional cost, but please note that we plan to introduce a Booster charge of $1 per Synology device starting April 15th 2022.

This has been one of our top feature requests on our Feature Voting page. We look at this system often to help guide our development priorities - if you've been using Comet Backup for a while and have some ideas about how we could improve the software, we would encourage you to make your voice heard and share any new ideas you have. Often multiple MSPs will rally together around an idea and refine it into something really wonderful.

Quick search​

The next time you look at the Comet Server web interface, you'll see a new search bar at the top of the screen:

This search bar allows you to quickly find user accounts by entering a few characters of their name.

The search bar will also find matching Storage Vaults and Protected Item. This is the first time it's been possible to find all matches of these by name from the Comet Server web interface. There are a few highly interesting scenarios that this enables - if you make good use of the Protected Item name fields, you can find all users backing up a certain product to troubleshoot them in bulk. Likewise if you are migrating storage platforms, finding all Storage Vaults named after your old platform might be very helpful.

For maximum productivity for keyboard users, you can focus the search field with Alt+Q, like Microsoft Outlook - and you can navigate through results with the arrow keys.

This request also came from our Feature Voting system, so I'd like to thank everyone who voted and commented on it for their advocacy and suggestions.

Single file restore from Disk Image​

As of Comet 21.12.5, it's now possible to restore single files and folders from a Disk Image backup job. When you select a Disk Image backup job to restore, you'll see a new third option alongside the existing virtual disk (vmdk) and physical disk (partition) restore options:

If you select the new option, you can browse and restore single files and/or folders to restore:

This feature is accessible from either the Comet Backup desktop app or from the Comet Server web interface when remotely controlling a live-connected device.

The Disk Image backup in Comet produces a backup job snapshot containing a VMDK file that is a complete image of the raw partition data. When you restore single files, Comet will attempt to parse the backed-up VMDK files directly from the Storage Vault without spooling. If you intend to restore a large amount of files, the extra indirection makes this process slightly less efficient than restoring the entire disk image - but if you have only a few files to restore it is significantly more convenient, as you do not need to restore the entire disk image first. This reduces the total bandwidth and helps achieve your recovery time objectives.

Because Comet has to parse and process the filesystem within the VMDK file itself without relying on the operating system's filesystem drivers, we don't have exhaustive support for all filesystems. This feature currently only supports parsing the NTFS filesystem, and only regular file types, directories, symlinks, and EFS files. Other exotic NTFS object types, some types of reparse point, and other filesystems such as FAT, exFAT or ReFS are not supported yet by our built-in filesystem parser. However, this independent NTFS implementation does mean that restoring single files from a Windows disk image backup can be done on any Comet device platform, such as a macOS or Linux device logged in to the same account.

As of 21.12.8, this feature also integrates with the other restore options, such as restoring files directly to an archive (zip, tar, tar.gz, and sqfs) and performing test restores with the "download only, do not save" option.

Custom retention pass timing​

Comet Backup allows you to configure retention policies to choose how long old backup jobs should be kept for. At some point, your retention policies have to be actually applied to the data in the Storage Vault; this is called a 'retention pass'. At the end of each backup job, Comet automatically considers whether it should run a retention pass.

Because the retention pass takes some additional time and system resources, often Comet will decide to skip running the retention pass until there's a sufficiently worthwhile amount of space that can be saved in your Storage Vault. The exact decision logic for this is more like an art than a science - we've got an excellent set of default settings, but as Comet grows larger we do find many users that are not well suited by our default settings.

If you do feel that the default behavior is not working well for you, then in Comet 21.12.x and later it's now possible to override the retention pass decision logic. You can choose this option as part of the advanced options for the backup job schedule, or, when running a backup job manually. There are four configuration options available:

The default setting is "Automatic" and is the same logic that Comet used in previous versions. When this option is selected, Comet uses a number of heuristics to determine whether to run a retention pass, based on the relative device performance compared to other devices in the account; the number of backup jobs in the Storage Vault that exceed the configured retention policy; and the time since the last retention pass. We have a full explanation of the rules in our documentation.

With the "Immediate" option, a retention pass will be run immediately at the end of every backup job, to completely enforce your retention policy. This is particularly helpful if your data set has a large amount of changes between incremental backup jobs, and you want to save as much space as possible in the Storage Vault at the expense of additional time to complete the operation.

The last two new options are "Run more often" and "Run less often". Like "Automatic", these options generally run retention passes after a few jobs or days have passed, but by explicitly setting "more often" and "less often" on your different devices within the same account, you can gain effective control over which device in the account is generally responsible for running retention passes.

If you have a low-powered laptop that's often put to sleep, and a high-powered always-online server with a lot of RAM both logged in as two devices in the same user account, then you can use these two options to encourage the high-powered device to do the retention pass work. Our "Automatic" logic does generally take uptime and system RAM into account in its decision making, but these options allow you to bias that decision in cases where you have a clearer understanding of the devices than Comet is able to determine automatically.

Two-factor TOTP codes without QR​

Comet Server supports two-factor authentication using WebAuthn - such as U2F dongles and fingerprint readers - and also TOTP, the standard and widely-used system of six-digit codes that change every 30 seconds.

Like most other services using TOTP, Comet provides a QR code to scan to enroll for TOTP in your mobile authenticator app. However there are genuine situations where no camera is available to scan the QR code. The most pressing situation is when enrolling the TOTP code into an enterprise security app or password manager, from a desktop PC without a camera available. In this situation, it's possible to enter a text code instead of scanning the QR code.

This text code is now displayed when setting up TOTP in Comet Server 21.12.5 and later. It should make life easier for users of managed TOTP password managers - or just users who have dropped their phone and broken the camera!

Single snapshot identification (Advanced)​

Sometimes in Comet, if your underlying storage platform experiences a data loss event, you may find that some of your backup snapshots within a Storage Vault are missing necessary chunks and can no longer be restored. In this case, the job report for a Retention pass normally mentions the exact IDs and filenames of the non-restorable snapshots to delete, in order to acknowledge and resolve the issue.

However when faced with this issue, many administrators might not have convenient access to the Storage Vault's data location in order to delete the affected files - for instance, if you are troubleshooting a customer's external harddrive backup that experienced some disk corruption.

In Comet 21.12.8, there's now a way to do this remotely from the Comet Server web interface. If you enable the "Advanced Options" toggle from your user menu in the top-right, then when going to restore data for an affected user, you'll see snapshot IDs and filenames listed directly alongside the snapshot option. This allows you to use Ctrl+F to find affected snapshots and select them for deletion via the 'Delete' menu option.

This feature has been available via the Comet Server API for some time, but having it as an option in the Comet Server web interface should make it much more accessible to the bulk of our partner base.

Short thoughts​

There's much more that's been happening in Comet - the admin homepage in the Comet Server web interface now loads faster when you visit it multiple times; the "Checking for free space" phase of backup jobs is now more resilient to network errors; the Thai translation has been significantly updated; the Comet Server web interface now visually shows icons for your Protected Items and Storage Vaults in more places; and many minor bugs and cosmetic bugs have been resolved. For more information, check out the full changelog.

Coming soon: New Quarterly release​

Once every quarter, we roll up all our Voyager development into a new long-term support release. The current quarterly release series, 21.11 "Himalia" from late November 2021, received three dedicated point releases to fix minor issues over its lifetime, and we are now closely approaching the end of its patch support period. You should expect to hear from us very soon about what's coming up next!

After each quarterly release gets superseded by another, the old quarterly release will receive ticket and critical support only, with most issues resolved by encouraging users to move to the current series.

Check back next month for our next regular update summary - you can subscribe by RSS to never miss an article - or check out our YouTube channel.

Mason Giles, CTO

What's New?​

"What's New?" is a new blog series covering recent changes to Comet in more detail. This article covers the latest changes in Comet Voyager over December 2021 and January 2022.

Comet 21.11.0 "Himalia" was released in late November 2021 - the latest in our series of quarterly releases. Quarterly releases bring you new features while still providing increased long-term stability around testing periods and update cycles. Himalia introduced many significant features, most notably the launch of Microsoft Office 365 backups into the quarterly release track for the first time.

We also publish weekly releases through the Voyager branch. Install the Voyager version of Comet to get the latest-and-greatest features as soon as they're out.

Since Himalia was launched in November 2021, there are a few Voyager highlights to cover:

New documentation page​

We recently made a major overhaul to our documentation site:

While this isn't a software change, your interactions with Comet extend beyond the software itself and we are committed to continuously improving that experience.

With the new page design, it's now much easier to:

• Navigate within large pages with the split side navigation
• Look things up on a mobile device
• Use the more responsive search system which should give more accurate results
• Search through past release notes

The release notes have moved to docs.cometbackup.com as well, which replaces both the old changelog website and the popup dialogs on the Downloads page in your account. We've also migrated the Comet Blog here too; this is the inaugural new blog post on the updated platform.

Storage Vault size measurement​

Comet 21.12.4 now keeps track of the historical size of your Storage Vault. In the future, this will let us chart the storage growth over time for your partners in the Comet Server web interface. Until this release has been out in the wild for a bit longer, though, there's not much data to show yet; you can enable the Storage Vault Size as a hidden optional column from the Job Search page.

This feature is also available via the BackupJobDetail.DestinationSizeEnd API and in our PHP and Ruby SDKs.

Schedules: If the last job was missed​

When configuring a user's scheduled backup job settings, you can schedule a backup to run at any particular time, or also when certain events happen. If you are working with laptop devices that are often offline, a regular job schedule is often insufficient. One solution to this problem is to aim for a scheduled time - say 5pm every day - but if the laptop is not available at that time, then run a new backup job as soon as the device is seen online again.

In the past, we had an option When PC starts, if the last job was missed - but modern laptops hardly ever fully turn off; between Always Connected PCs (ACPC), Windows Fast Startup and more, the PC usually only enters a deep sleep state, and this setting was not being triggered as intended.

We've updated this same setting to just say If the last job was missed. This reflects the concept that we will make use of other possible signal indicators to make this happen in practice. As part of the 21.12.3 update, the device will look at when the live connection to the Comet Server is dropped and reconnected; because this happens during PC sleep, this is a possible time to check if the new schedule option should run now.

Digital Ocean, Catalyst Cloud, and Cynny Space​

Comet supports a lot of cloud storage providers. When you set up your Comet-based backup infrastructure, you're welcome to use any kind of storage you like, whether that's a colocated RAID array, a commercial cloud storage provider like Wasabi or Backblaze B2, or just some harddrives in your basement. There's always a balance between price and quality, but an additional major factor is the physical geographical location of the data, which affects not only latency - Comet's performance is somewhat latency-sensitive - and of course also data sovereignty requirements if your customers are storing data that is subject to local regulations.

We've published a large list of compatible cloud storage providers on the Integrations page of our website and in our documentation, and we'd certainly recommend any of them or any provider that can be connected via a supported protocol (SFTP, S3-Compatible, ...), but we have recently taken to adding built-in support for more and more of these partners.

In Comet 21.12.2, we're pleased to announce that three new cloud storage providers have been raised to built-in options.

• DigitalOcean Spaces, the S3-compatible offering from this publicly-listed US cloud company costs 20 USD/mo/TB and is currently available in seven countries including the USA, Netherlands, Singapore, the UK, Germany, Canada, and India.

• Catalyst Cloud Object Storage, an S3-compatible offering from Catalyst in New Zealand. Prices start from 30 NZD/mo/TB for a single availability-zone with triple replication.

• The SwARM, by Cynny Space, the latest S3-compatible offering from Cynny Space. Datacenters are hosted in Italy and France, and there are no additional charges for bandwidth.

If you're shopping around for a new cloud storage provider, we can recommend all three of these offerings, which have been tested and verified by our team for performance and reliability.

150% scaling support on Windows​

The Comet Backup desktop app now has improved support for high DPI screens. If you have your Windows OS set to 150% scaling size, previously Comet would round up to 200%. We've upgraded our Qt integration to improve this and now Comet will seamlessly work at non-integral scale fractions.

This has been particularly helpful for many current-generation 14" laptops with high DPI screens that are factory-shipped at 150% scale. Despite meeting Comet's minimum system requirements for screen resolution, the Comet Backup app would have been larger than the physical screen by default. This is no longer an issue with the latest changes.

Two-Factor Authentication using WebAuthn​

If you're using U2F for two-factor logins to the Comet Server web interface, you may have recently seen a prompt in the web browser asking you to upgrade to WebAuthn.

We're very pleased to announce that Comet Server has completely upgraded all two-factor support from U2F to the full WebAuthn in a seamless way that preserves full compatibility with your U2F devices, but adds support for two-factor via fingerprint readers, your Windows Hello PIN, or even facial recognition.

There are no changes required at your end to take advantage of this new feature. We do recommend checking if you can now add additional two-factor devices, if you have the hardware support for it. You can configure supported two-factor devices from the Account page within your Comet Server's web interface.

This change also partially unifies Comet Server's two-factor authentication capabilities with our self-service account page. Did you know that you can configure 2FA for account.cometbackup.com from your 'My Account' section?

Changes to Windows Server supported versions​

With Comet, we are acutely aware that there is a large and diverse partner base of client devices and operating systems running in the wild. The Windows Server 2008 series of operating systems are coming to the end of their extended support lifecycle from Microsoft. There's always a long-tail of stragglers who are stuck on old versions of Windows Server for various reasons, and some of those are valid and important reasons. However, it remains a fact that over time it becomes more difficult for us to maintain support for these old operating systems.

Unfortunately the WebAuthn feature was the "straw that broke the camel's back" and we have needed to make some changes to the versions of Windows that are supported.

This change in compatibility only affects your use of Comet Server, not the client; and it only affects the original Windows Server 2008, not the updated R2 release. We expect there to be very few partners affected by this scenario.

Settings screen: Page redesign, Tenants, and Test Connection​

We have shipped a major redesign of the settings screen in 21.12.0. Previously Comet Server's integrated settings configuration led you through a settings wizard. However, over time the wizard became too long.

The new Settings page makes it far easier to navigate to the specific single setting you are looking for, making for a much improved experience. We are working to reintroduce some of the workflow in a future iteration of this page.

As part of this change, we've also renamed 'Organizations' to 'Tenants', to make it more clear that you are constructing a multi-tenant world. Tenants are Comet Server's feature to partition your Comet Server into multiple isolated zones, so you can sell access to reseller partners or unrelated companies and give them a nearly-full Comet Server experience while still maintaining global management.

Another change in the new settings screen is a 'Test Connection' button for Storage Role storage. If you aren't 100% sure about your cloud storage provider settings or your SMB credentials when configuring where your Storage Role Comet Server stores its data, the new 'Test Connection' button will let you check it immediately, shortening the debug cycle time when setting up your storage environment.

Recovery environment: ISO support, timezones, and logs​

Comet Backup supports taking disk image backups of a Windows PC or server. This is a bare-metal backup of all disk sectors for disaster recovery purposes. If you take a Disk Image backup with Comet, you can restore it back as a VMDK file for virtual booting (physical to virtual - P2V) or for uploading to a cloud provider to virtual-boot in the cloud. Or you can directly reimage a local disk.

When the time comes to restore, you will ordinarily find that Windows is currently running from C:\ and it's not possible to overwrite it. This is a good and important restriction - overwriting the running OS, including the pagefile, drivers and NTOSKRNL would be a recipe for an instant bluescreen! Instead, Comet provides a built-in Recovery Media feature, allowing you to create a miniature Windows environment that boots directly into Comet, allowing you to safely restore your C:\ partition from a Disk Image backup.

There are a few new features with the Recovery Environment. It's now possible to generate the recovery media as an ISO file, in addition to the previously existing USB flash drive support. Creating an ISO file is much more convenient if you have a virtual environment. The generated ISO file can be booted via both BIOS and EFI.

Thank you to everyone in our Feature Voting system submitted feedback that this feature was important to you. We use your input to help guide our development priorities.

It's now also possible to reconfigure the timezone within the recovery environment. Because the recovery media might be booted on any different PC, the timezone settings might not match. This can cause a problem for S3-compatible providers in particular, as the signature steps within this protocol involve the current time and many cloud providers require a close time sync in order to access the storage service. In the past, you would have had to open the Command Prompt window and use the time.exe and w32tm.exe commands to update the time in the Recovery Media. Now, it's as simple as choosing the "Configure Timezone" option from the top menu bar and following the wizard.

It's now also possible to view the full recovery media generation logs. In the past, you could only see the most recent line, but some types of error with the generation are best understood with more context. We've redesigned the wizard screens to seamlessly show more detailed information on demand.

That's all​

Thanks for reading - stay tuned for our next monthly update summary, and if you would prefer to watch instead of read, we have a large number of update summaries available on our YouTube channel.

Mason Giles, CTO

​

Comet Backup and Storadera Integrate to Provide Cost-Effective and High-Performance Backups with S3-Compatible Object Storage​

Christchurch / Tallinn – January 13, 2022 – Comet Backup, a leading IT backup platform, and Storadera, an S3 compatible cloud storage provider, announced a new integration partnership for businesses to backup and protect their data. Transparent, scalable pricing allows customers to control their costs.

“There is a growing need for backup solutions and cloud storage which is simple to use and, even more important, has easy, predictable pricing. This integration partnership delivers those gains straight to businesses and IT teams,” said Tommi Kannisto, CEO of Storadera.

Data security is one of the easiest ways to ensure business continuity. A breach can have a serious impact on a business’s reputation. Comet Backup and Storadera allow businesses to keep their data safe and mitigate risk.

Comet’s chain-free, incremental forever technology allows for data to be deduplicated on the fly, transferring directly to Storadera’s S3 object storage with no spool space. Backups are incremental forever and after the first backup, customers never have to re-upload the full file again. The company’s commitment to data security includes AES-256 military-grade encryption, two-factor authentication and free auto-renewing SSL support. “Information security is at the center of everything we do,” said Mason Giles, Chief Technology Officer at Comet Backup.

Storadera is also engineered to meet stringent data security and privacy requirements. The service is built and managed according to security best practices and standards, and employs a defense-in-depth approach to protect against a wide array of threats.

Storadera supports a comprehensive set of data privacy and security capabilities to prevent unauthorized access. Strong user authentication features guard access to stored data. All data stored on Storadera is encrypted by default to protect data at rest. All communications with Storadera are transmitted using HTTPS to protect data in transit.

“This integration partnership is a win-win for any business looking to protect their data, whether they’re based in Europe or have locations worldwide,” said Josh Flores, General Manager at Comet Backup.

About Comet Backup​

Comet provides fast, secure backup software for IT professionals and businesses worldwide, localizing to 13 languages. It enables organizations to secure their data, deliver business continuity and disaster preparedness. Trusted by customers across 120 countries, Comet has been recognized as a momentum leader by G2 and awarded “Best Software” and “Most Affordable” by Software Suggest. Founded by the same team who built MyClient and Nexus (now a J2 Global company), Comet is a privately held company based in Christchurch, New Zealand.

Follow and connect with Comet: www.cometbackup.com | Twitter | LinkedIn | Facebook

Comet PR Contact

press@cometbackup.com

About Storadera

Storadera is a European cloud storage service provider located in Tallinn, Estonia. At Storadera we believe that simplicity and cost predictability are key to providing companies with the confidence they need to migrate to the cloud. Storadera’s mission is to provide a scalable service with simple, predictable pricing. With Storadera’s Space S3 compatible cloud storage service you can save up to 5x compared to incumbent players. For Storadera’s Space Premium service package only pay 6€/TB/month! That’s all. It is that simple! No hidden costs!

Join us to start using Storadera with Comet Backup!

Storadera

Margus Danil

Business Development Manager

margus@storadera.com

​

Comet Backup and Filebase Integrate to Provide Cost-Effective and High-Performance Backups across S3 Object Storage Powered by Blockchain​

Filebase’s geo-redundant object storage integrates seamlessly with Comet for an affordable and encrypted backup and recovery solution​

Boston/Christchurch – August 3, 2021 — Comet Backup, the IT backup platform, today announced a new integration partnership with Filebase, the world’s first object storage platform powered by decentralized storage networks. This integration partnership provides Filebase customers with a fast, secure backup solution to protect their data and ensure its availability, with an average cost savings of 94%.

Filebase’s unique storage backend connects to multiple decentralized storage networks, powered by Blockchain. The Comet-Filebase environment ensures that data is secure and always encrypted during backup, transit and at rest. With objects stored redundantly across multiple geographies, bucket replication policies are a thing of the past.

With Comet Backup, Filebase customers have a profitable, all-in-one platform with a flexible architecture that allows customers to manage data backup with enterprise-grade S3 object storage and fast recovery.

“Developers and Administrators spend endless capital and energy today in the cloud, never fully convinced if they have a proper 3-2-1 backup policy in-place.” said Zac Cohen, Co-Founder and COO at Filebase. “The speed and elegance of Comet Backup plus Filebase allows for automated and performant backups that are geo-distributed by default. The solution pays for itself immediately, because you aren’t required to build-out costly bucket replication policies just to have durable and performant data.”

Comet’s chain-free, incremental forever technology allows for data to be deduplicated on the fly, transferring directly to Filebase’s S3 object storage with no spool space. Backups are incremental forever and after the first backup, customers never have to re-upload the full file again. The company’s commitment to data security includes AES-256 military-grade encryption, two-factor authentication and free auto-renewing SSL support.

“We've seen increased demand for high-performance storage at a competitive price point and our integration partnership with Filebase allows Comet partners to access that,” said Josh Flores, General Manager at Comet Backup. “This is why we're excited for the benefits of Filebase's blockchain-powered, decentralized storage and Comet's own securely encrypted, deduplicated incremental backups working together.”

For more information on how to use Comet Backup with Filebase, please visit here.

About Comet Backup​

Comet provides fast, secure backup software for IT professionals and businesses worldwide, localizing to 10 languages. It enables organizations to secure their data, deliver business continuity and disaster preparedness. Trusted by customers across 110 countries, Comet has been recognized as a momentum leader by G2 and awarded “Best Software” and “Most Affordable” by Software Suggest. Founded by the same team who built MyClient and Nexus (now a J2 Global company), Comet is a privately held company based in Christchurch, New Zealand.

Follow and connect with Comet: www.cometbackup.com | Twitter | LinkedIn | Facebook

Comet PR Contact

Natalie Marinelli

Marketing Lead, Comet Backup

press@cometbackup.com

About Filebase​

Filebase is the world’s first object storage platform powered by multiple decentralized storage networks. Filebase helps customers save over 90% on their storage costs compared to traditional cloud providers. Additionally, Filebase’s proprietary edge caching technology helps customers achieve industry-leading performance when fetching data from decentralized networks. Filebase was awarded the “Most Exciting Data Storage And Sharing Project” in HackerNoon’s 2020 Noonies Awards and was a finalist in Storage Magazine’s 2019 Product of the Year Awards. To learn more about Filebase, please visit https://www.filebase.com.

Filebase PR Contact

Brianna Doe

Marketing Manager, Filebase

bdoe@filebase.com

Grow together. Win together.​

“Most mornings when I come in, I sit down and check Comet’s reporting dashboard. You can see the numbers of devices growing each day. I think, ‘Wow, this is so cool!’ Comet is a small giant! We are on a massive growth trajectory. I get to contribute to the growth. That’s a remarkable feeling,” confides Oscar Zhou, one of Comet’s Software Developers.

“I think for the whole development team, we have the same feeling, ‘Wow! Wow, wow.’ It’s quite lucky to be with the company at this foundational stage. For example, at Microsoft, their software is very successful. But as a developer, you can’t catch up because there are decades of code there, you’re just a small part. At Comet, I still have the chance to get an overall understanding of Comet’s code, the logic, and the code flow. I have the chance to work with multiple operating systems, front end and back end technology, web application and desktop application – all in a single job! It’s hard to find a project that covers so many things. This is a chance to improve my skills and open my eyes. I want to grow with Comet.”

Making your own luck.​

It wasn’t always a given that technology would be such a large part of Oscar’s life. He grew up in FengCheng, a remote town in north-eastern China. The country was just opening to the world economy. Home computers were not yet commonplace. Instead, his first exposure to technology was through a hobby group in elementary school. He learned simple commands in Logo, an educational programming language, on a DOS operating system.

“You have to understand I didn’t know any English. In China, we use a character-based writing system. At that age, I had only learned the English alphabet. I would type R-I-G-H-T. But I didn’t know that meant ‘right’. Instead, I memorized commands.”

Oscar was the first person among his extended family to attend to university. His mom asked him, ‘What do you want to major in? Do you want to be a doctor? A teacher? Do you want to join the military?’

“I was focused on providing a better life for my family. We had never owned a computer. At that time, I didn’t know what computer science was. But since I was a little more familiar with computers compared to my classmates, I chose computer science as my major.” Software and tech were booming in China. It seemed like a sure route to a lucrative career.

It was. After graduating university, Oscar moved to a city near Beijing for a software job and lived in the dormitory on the company’s campus. “I worked 12-hour days, 6 days a week. In China, you can’t leave before your manager finishes work. I was a junior, a newbie, so I needed to follow the norms. I learned a lot, but I wasn’t happy.”

After 12 months, Oscar took a job offer closer to home, hoping to find more fulfillment. But little changed. “I thought life is just like that. Just keep working and improving. Get a better salary, marry, have a baby…” Until a chance encounter changed the trajectory of his life.

A seed grew in my heart.​

One day, the company owner, a Taiwanese businessman living in America, took his employees out for dinner. Oscar happened to sit next to him. They struck up a conversation and Oscar learned the businessman first went overseas in his late twenties. “At that moment I thought, ‘Ahh! Okay, I still have a chance!’ A seed grew in my heart.”

“At first, I wasn’t sure because it was such a big decision to upend my life. Before this, I had never met anyone who lived overseas. This was a completely unknown realm for everyone in my life – my parents, my friends. I mulled the idea over for a couple of months. But once the idea took root, I kept thinking about it. I decided it was a challenge I wanted to face.”

When Oscar told his parents, they were taken aback. They asked him, what do you need to do to achieve this dream? “English was the first difficulty I needed to face.” His dad told him, ‘Okay, if you can pass the English exam, we will support your decision.’

“I was so moved. They supported me unconditionally. The love, the family love, nothing can compare with that.” Normally people will keep working and study English on the side. “But for me, I wanted to have total focus on my goal. I didn’t want to have an excuse when it got hard. So, I resigned my job. I cut off my way back. I thought, ‘Okay, now I only have one way, I must go forward.’”

Oscar spent the next 13 months living alone, teaching himself English online. “That was the most difficult time of my life. I didn’t have anyone to talk to. My friends knew my decision, so when they went out, they didn’t call me. I wanted zero distractions. I just wanted to make it. It was torture.” After several attempts, Oscar passed the English exam with a score that would ensure his acceptance into an international master’s program. His motto: never give up.

Oscar boarded a plane to New Zealand to commence a one-year master’s program in Computer Science. “I clearly remember when I got off the plane, the first thing I did was take a deep breath. In 2016, when I left China, the air pollution had become quite bad. In New Zealand, I felt like I was breathing pure oxygen. It was amazing.”

Fall in love with the thing you are doing.​

At the beginning of 2020, Oscar joined the Comet team. His energy is infectious; consistently positive and upbeat. “This is the happiest I have been in a job. This is a really great environment.”

His secret? “If you want to be good, you have to fall in love with the thing you are doing. I feel a sense of achievement when I solve bugs and develop new features. It’s about the recognition from our customers, their satisfaction with our product.”

“One of the reasons I’m really happy here is because I have role models within the development team. It’s a stroke of luck to meet a mentor who is not just knowledge, but generous with their time and learnings. Mason, our CTO, is sooo knowledgeable. It’s amazing. It’s not easy to find that. In most companies, a CTO isn’t necessarily available to the developers. One of Comet’s advantages is I can talk directly to the leadership team because we are a smaller company with a flat hierarchy structure.”

“As a team, we are a close circle. There is a matching feeling, a synergy between us. I have experienced lots of teams, but our team is quite different to be honest. Everyone has a personality and a unique contribution. We all give the most energy we can to push Comet forward together.”

Advice to developers beginning their careers.​

1. Get your hands dirty programming. There are lots of practice websites where you can practice your code. If you don’t understand something, don’t give up! Read it a second time, read it a third time. Never give up.
2. Be patient when you are trying to solve bugs. If you begin feeling frustrated because you can’t solve the problem, go outside, have a walk. Take a break. When you relax, the solution will pop up. ‘Wow, so easy!’ When you are anxious and rushed, you won’t be able to solve the problem. Be patient with yourself.
3. Writing summaries is a good way to improve. When you solve a problem, write it down. Keep it somewhere. Then later you can go back over it several times. There is an information ocean, we can’t learn everything at once. Learn and improve through repetition.

Oscar muses, “Life is a marathon. It’s not a sprint. It’s about how long can you be consistent. It’s not about how fast can you do something for a short time. When I was little, I didn’t know that someday I would become a software developer. I didn’t even know what a software developer was. And after I become a software developer, I didn’t know I could work overseas. I didn’t know that I could sit beside you, speaking English. Life is filled with lots of unknowns. We keep exploring. The journey has just started.”

Where are you from?

I grew up in Kolkata, in eastern India. However, I spent much of my career working in storage development in Bangalore, which is further south.

Where did your passion for tech start?

When I started my engineering undergrad, I used a computer for the first time. I had many interests, I would have liked to study pure science (physics) or electronics engineering, but the job market in those fields is tough and you often would need a PhD. Computer science helped me get a good job straight out of university with Symantec.

Can you tell me about the patent you developed while working there?

Symantec has an invention disclosure program. Anyone can invent and disclose. You don’t need to ask anybody, “Is this patentable? Is this a good idea or not?”

I submitted an idea related to storage optimization. There were at least three rejections on similar topics prior to my application. So it was really unlikely that my idea would be accepted. But nevertheless, I gave it a shot.

The filtering committee reviews everyone’s ideas based on business merit. There are three possible outcomes: they might reject it, they might ask for additional information, or they might go for a patent.

Thankfully, they accepted my idea after a bit of modification. They took someone else’s work and merged my idea into it to make a single patent. I got a bonus and they gave me a gift – a big picnic bag with plates, a full cutlery set and a bottle opener. It was pretty nice!

What did you know about New Zealand before you moved here?

I moved here without visiting first. I did my research and watched a lot of YouTube videos: 14 Things to See in New Zealand, What type of backpackers accommodation to stay in, Where to hire a car or bicycle, Top restaurants in Auckland. I was an expert tourist before moving here. [laughs]

Moving halfway around the world is a big change. What was your experience like transitioning from India to Christchurch?

The cities I lived in in India were crowded. 10 million people live in Bangalore alone – twice the size of New Zealand’s entire population. More people live in a single city than in the whole country here. I like living somewhere less crowded. It’s quite nice.

What attracted you to work at Comet?

It’s rare to come across a data company in New Zealand, particularly in the product development space. When I saw the Comet advertisement asking for someone with a storage development background, I was really excited and immediately felt that this could be my next company.

When I joined Comet, it was on the smaller side, but they were growing at a really nice rate. Because I spent my career in different aspects of the storage industry, it was a good fit for me. The fact is everybody needs backup. No matter where you store the data.

Have you had new experiences in this role?

In previous roles, the scope of the features I worked on only required about two months of work. The feature that I am leading development on right now is much longer, it has many pieces. I’ve had to do quite a bit of research to form the development pathway. The fundamentals are the same, but different problems give you an opportunity to learn new things. And that keeps the work interesting.

What is collaboration like amongst the development team?

Because of the size of our team, everyone knows what everyone else is working on. We aren’t stuck in endless meetings for hours. It maximizes the amount of time we spend focused on the product.

For example, I sit next to Oscar who is working on the GUI side of the large feature I am working on. We can discuss things and make decisions efficiently. At larger companies that would go to an entirely different team, you wouldn’t know who is doing that job. Here we don’t have that hierarchy. I like smaller teams because they are often more productive.

What keeps you inspired and passionate about the work?

I really see Comet as a promising company. It has a big future. For each configuration, it needs to be scalable to work at that level and that brings new complexities with it. As the company grows, I am looking forward to growing with our clients because that brings new and interesting challenges.

How have you found the work culture at Comet?

The good thing about Comet is I feel comfortable. It’s easy to come and go and do the work on your own schedule. I like that flexibility.

What do you enjoy doing in your off time?

I watch a lot of animation and Disney movies with my young son. He’s almost three and he’s at the age where he’s asking lots of questions which is fun.

What’s the most remarkable place you’ve traveled?

After my wife and I got married, we visited Lakshadweep – a small archipelago of islands about 400 kilometers off the western coast of India. The environment is pristine. Limited tourists are allowed at once to preserve the natural environment. There is a coral reef and sandy beaches with beautiful views. The water is full of colorful fish and underwater plants. The nature there is unspoiled.

Do you have a favorite food?

I don’t have a favorite, I like to try all kind of things – as long as they’re cooked! I was watching a YouTube video where a Japanese cook was preparing shrimp. I would be perfectly happy if they fried that! I have no reservations about food. I’ll try all sorts of things.

"Software is a fascinating industry because you can create something out of nothing. It’s like nothing else in the world. It’s purely creative work. What we’re doing here is craftsmanship. At the same time, it’s like construction work, it’s a laboring job. We’re here to do an honest day’s work and to produce great software."

- Mason Giles, CTO at Comet Backup

When did you first realize your passion for tech?​

I have been a programmer ever since I can remember. Even when I was a kid. I probably had ten years of experience before I started working professionally.

My parents are in the medical sector. Back when their practice was all paper-based, Dad put together the office’s first database all by himself rather than using off the shelf software. He wasn’t a programmer by trade, but he nudged me in the right direction. Showing me how to write an IF statement, that sort of thing.

What are your interests or hobbies?​

My hobby is software. Ever since I was a kid if there’s been something I wanted, I understood I didn’t have to wait for someone else to build it, I can build it myself. And if I can share that with other people online it’s great. I’ve probably released over 150 open source projects in my spare time over the last decade.

You were Comet’s first employee. Tell me about that journey.​

I started working for Peter, Comet’s founder, ten years ago as a summer intern. My first job was with MyClient – Comet’s sister business. It was interesting work. I got 90% of the way through the development project before I had to go back to university. After that, I had a standing offer to come back.

What sparked the inception of Comet?​

As a predecessor to Comet, Peter had an MSP business specializing in providing backup services. The backup products that were on the market had many problems. We had to do insane, invasive, and unusual things just to get them to work.

I researched emerging algorithms and chunking technologies online. What I found had great potential and I thought, ‘How can we build on these new ideas?’ At the same time, we saw more and more bugs and we thought, ‘Ah this is just ridiculous. What if we made our own backup software?’

We kicked around the idea within the office. It started to look more and more plausible based on our extensive years of experience in the backup space using other vendors' technologies. A few weeks later I sent the initial email out to Peter and Josh outlining how we’d do it.

What was in that initial plan?​

I proposed a roadmap where we would build File & Folder backups first and then Disk Image later. We knew from running a commercial backup company that multiple products were needed to support different parts of the market. Based on that experience, it was very important to us that Comet have a unified management system so that MSPs could use a single product. It’s important to us to be comprehensive about what we support.

You’ve been at this for a long time. Were there any formative moments for you?​

Before Comet, when I was working at the MSP, I took a phone call. The customer had lost their data and needed it back. I went through the settings, got a remote support session set up, went in to do a restore and… there was nothing there. My heart plummeted. I had to explain to the customer that their data was gone, and we couldn’t help them get it back. That was the worst phone call I’ve ever had with a client.

That was a formative experience in terms of how seriously I take this job. What we’re doing is incredibly important. We are dealing with people’s livelihoods. Data is extremely precious. We are the last line of defense when things go wrong.

Are there other areas from the early days that influenced the way Comet is today?​

At MyClient, MSPs came to us with niche requests. We pushed down the route of making the software adjustable and adaptable. That sort of flexibility proved very popular.

With Comet, we decided to make the API flexible from the outset. We had experience working with other backup vendors' unaccommodating APIs and the many inconsistencies and bugs that resulted from that.

Clients use Comet in surprising ways. The only reason they can use the technology in ways we never anticipated is because our API is extremely introspectable and expandable. We’ve designed it so that people can stretch it to fit their needs.

As CTO you’ve made some foundational decisions that have proved to upend industry norms.​

It’s important to make bold technical decisions that make things work better. That’s one of the main reasons we’ve been successful. Much of Comet’s software is programmed in Go. When we started, it was a very new language and that was a brave choice.

We had internalized trauma from our MSP days dealing with our competitors’ C# and Java-based backup products and knew the awful problems those languages inherently caused – such as terrible memory usage. One of Comet’s points of differentiation is that we don’t use Java.

A number of our clients have lived that same experience. When you hand them the keys to Comet, which doesn’t have any of those issues, it’s like you’ve taken them out of a broken house and moved them into a beautiful new home.

Software can be better. It’s just computers. We can make them do whatever we want. We don’t have to put up with bad software.

Why is it hard to give exact ETAs on new feature releases?​

We can plan out how long we expect development projects to take. But all the unknown unknowns are what end up taking time. There are a lot of hard-won lessons.

It’s not like churning out your hundredth website or app. After the hundredth one you’ve got a pretty good idea of how long it takes. What we’re doing here is craftsmanship. No one has built this exact software before, we’re doing this for the first time. You learn quite a lot as you go along.

I’ve worked for enough tech companies to know that’s a pretty remarkable approach – building software with deep care and craftsmanship. You’re touching on why the work culture at Comet is so special. What else is in that recipe?​

Part of it is Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. You’ve got to make sure the team’s basic needs are taken care of first – competitive salaries, good working environment, etc. Once you’ve got the basics down, then you need to ask yourself:

• Are we working with cool, cutting edge technologies that we enjoy?
• Is each team member learning new things?
• Do we feel we’re having an impact?
• Are we continuing to make brave decisions?

We encompass all those things in our work culture at Comet, which means we’re far enough up Maslow’s Hierarchy that we offer a pretty competitive experience to our team.

Do you have a dream job?​

I love what I do. I get to write code every day, I have a lot of autonomy and I get to make a difference. It’s really hard to beat that. I think there are three things you need in a job:

• Something you’re good at.
• Something you enjoy.
• Something that pays well.

A lot of people don’t ever get all three at once. I’m very lucky to have hit that trifecta. Software is a fascinating industry to be in because you can create something out of nothing. It’s purely creative work. It’s like nothing else in the world. At the same time, it’s like construction work, it’s a laboring job. We’re here to do an honest day’s work and to produce great software. The fact that it pays well and the fact that I’m good at it and I enjoy it. It’s not a bad gig.