Data compression is the compacting of data by decreasing the number of bits that are stored or transmitted. Because of this, the compressed data will take considerably less disk space than the initial one, so much more content might be stored on the same amount of space. There're various compression algorithms that work in different ways and with many of them just the redundant bits are removed, which means that once the information is uncompressed, there's no loss of quality. Others erase excessive bits, but uncompressing the data later will result in reduced quality in comparison with the original. Compressing and uncompressing content needs a large amount of system resources, particularly CPU processing time, so every hosting platform that employs compression in real time must have adequate power to support that feature. An example how info can be compressed is to replace a binary code such as 111111 with 6x1 i.e. "remembering" what number of sequential 1s or 0s there should be instead of keeping the entire code.

Data Compression in Cloud Web Hosting

The compression algorithm that we use on the cloud web hosting platform where your new cloud web hosting account will be created is known as LZ4 and it is used by the advanced ZFS file system that powers the system. The algorithm is much better than the ones other file systems work with because its compression ratio is higher and it processes data considerably quicker. The speed is most noticeable when content is being uncompressed as this happens quicker than info can be read from a hdd. Because of this, LZ4 improves the performance of each Internet site stored on a server that uses this particular algorithm. We take advantage of LZ4 in an additional way - its speed and compression ratio let us produce a couple of daily backups of the full content of all accounts and keep them for one month. Not only do these backups take less space, but also their generation does not slow the servers down like it often happens with other file systems.

Data Compression in Semi-dedicated Hosting

Your semi-dedicated hosting account will be created on a cloud platform that runs on the leading-edge ZFS file system. The latter uses a compression algorithm known as LZ4, that is far better than other algorithms regarding compression ratio and speed. The gain is noticeable especially when data is being uncompressed and not only is LZ4 much quicker than other algorithms, but it is also quicker in uncompressing data than a system is in reading from a hard disk drive. This is the reason why sites running on a platform which employs LZ4 compression perform faster since the algorithm is most efficient when it processes compressible data i.e. web content. A further advantage of using LZ4 is that the backups of the semi-dedicated accounts that we keep need significantly less space and they are generated faster, which enables us to store multiple daily backups of your files and databases.