Data compression is the compacting of info by decreasing the number of bits that are stored or transmitted. Thus, the compressed data will require less disk space than the original one, so much more content could be stored using the same amount of space. You can find various compression algorithms which function in different ways and with a number of them only the redundant bits are erased, so once the data is uncompressed, there is no decrease in quality. Others delete excessive bits, but uncompressing the data subsequently will result in reduced quality compared to the original. Compressing and uncompressing content needs a large amount of system resources, and in particular CPU processing time, so any Internet hosting platform that uses compression in real time needs to have sufficient power to support this feature. An example how information can be compressed is to substitute a binary code such as 111111 with 6x1 i.e. "remembering" how many sequential 1s or 0s there should be instead of keeping the actual code.

Data Compression in Cloud Hosting

The compression algorithm which we employ on the cloud web hosting platform where your new cloud hosting account will be created is called LZ4 and it's used by the state-of-the-art ZFS file system which powers the system. The algorithm is better than the ones other file systems work with because its compression ratio is a lot higher and it processes data considerably quicker. The speed is most noticeable when content is being uncompressed since this happens at a faster rate than info can be read from a hard disk drive. Because of this, LZ4 improves the performance of every Internet site hosted on a server that uses this algorithm. We take full advantage of LZ4 in an additional way - its speed and compression ratio let us make multiple daily backups of the whole content of all accounts and keep them for one month. Not only do our backup copies take less space, but their generation won't slow the servers down like it can often happen with alternative file systems.

Data Compression in Semi-dedicated Hosting

Your semi-dedicated hosting account shall be created on a cloud platform that is run on the state-of-the-art ZFS file system. The aforementioned uses a compression algorithm known as LZ4, that is far better than all the other algorithms regarding compression ratio and speed. The gain is significant particularly when data is being uncompressed and not only is LZ4 much faster than other algorithms, but it is also quicker in uncompressing data than a system is in reading from a hard drive. That's why websites running on a platform which employs LZ4 compression perform better because the algorithm is most efficient when it processes compressible data i.e. website content. An additional advantage of using LZ4 is that the backups of the semi-dedicated accounts that we keep need a lot less space and are generated a lot quicker, which allows us to keep a couple of daily backups of all your files and databases.