Saturn is the latest entry in our quarterly rollup series. It branches off from our main rolling Voyager development into a fixed target for our partners to qualify and build upon.
Saturn is the sixth planet from the Sun and is the second-largest planet in our solar system, after Jupiter. It is large enough that it can fit more than 760 Earths inside it.
Despite its enormous size, Saturn has a relatively fast rotation. A day on Saturn lasts only about 10.7 hours. This rapid rotation causes the planet to flatten slightly at the poles and bulge at the equator.
Saturn has been known since ancient times, and its rings were first observed by Galileo Galilei in 1610. The true nature of the rings was identified by Christiaan Huygens in 1655.
As for the software, Comet 23.11.0 Saturn brings 8 new features and 23 enhancements, including our new VMware Protected Item type.
As always for a new quarterly release, there are two changelogs for 23.11.0 Saturn depending on whether you are coming from the previous quarterly release or the previous Voyager release:
Changes compared to 23.8.3
New Features
- Added new VMware Protected Item type. Comet supports both the free and paid versions of VMware ESXi for backups and restores
- Added a lobby option to the Comet Backup desktop app installers, allowing for silent installation with fully-remote device authentication via the Devices page in the Comet Server web interface
- Updated the name of the Connected Devices page to Devices in the Comet Server web interface and redesigned the page to show all devices
- Added bulk actions to the Devices page in the Comet Server web interface
- Added support for restoring Disk image backups as VMware-compatible virtual disks
- Added new "Comet Storage" and "Comet Storage (Object Lock)" storage destinations, allowing users to select Comet's new bundled Wasabi storage option for Storage Vaults (including Storage Templates)
- Added the ability to enforce policies created by a top-level administrator onto tenant administrators and tenant users. This allows top-level administrators to enforce settings and preferences across an entire Comet Server
Enhancements
- Protected Item types that are not compatible with the device operating system will now be greyed out and disabled in the Comet Server web interface
- Added the ability to mark jobs that are stuck in the running state as abandoned if they are unable to be cancelled in the Comet Server web interface
- Changed clients on Linux platforms to log to stdin/stderr for background services
- Improved the performance of restoring data from backups which contain large amounts of blank data, such as Disk Images
- Improved Comet Server behavior when it fails to start due to license issues. It now starts successfully with limited functionality and displays an error message indicating how to identify the issue
- Added logging of the reason the job started at the beginning of backup job logs
- Added option to aggregate usage by Account Name for Gradient PSA integration
- Added automatic cancellation of running jobs using a Storage Vault when that Storage Vault is deleted
- Improved the appearance of the "About" window in the Comet Server Service Manager
- Reduced memory usage when loading large index files from Comet Server Storage Role-type Storage Vaults
- Renamed "Restore files and folders" to "Granular restore" when restoring files and folders from a Disk Image or Hyper-V backup
- Added a new template for Amazon S3 and Wasabi Storage Templates to make it easier to set Object Lock on a template.
- Added ability to configure server audit file logging from the Comet Server web interface
- Significantly improved the speed of granular restores from Disk Image backups
- Improved the performance of restoring files and/or folders from Disk Image backups
- Significantly improved performance when restoring directories containing only a few files from a File and Folder Protected Item
- Updated the Activity browser filter names in the Comet Backup desktop app to better clarify their functionality
- Slightly changed the appearance of the Comet Backup desktop app About dialog
- Improve security posture of the Comet Server web interface by adding additional XSS protections
- Updated the preconfigured exclusion list for File and Folder Protected Items on the Comet Server web interface with valid exclusions
- Lowered memory usage when uploading to S3-backed Storage Vaults in some use cases
- Removed the device dropdown in the Comet Server web interface when adding a Protected Item when there's only one device
- Improved the admin accounts dialogue to have a separate Policies tab in the Comet Server web interface
Changes compared to 23.9.11
Bug Fixes
- Fixed an issue with the Comet Server web interface showing an internal error popup when the server is first started
- Fixed an issue with the Comet Server web interface throwing an error before valid VMware credentials have been added