Data compression is the compacting of info by lowering the number of bits that are stored or transmitted. Consequently, the compressed info requires less disk space than the initial one, so much more content can be stored on identical amount of space. You'll find many different compression algorithms which function in different ways and with several of them just the redundant bits are erased, therefore once the information is uncompressed, there is no loss of quality. Others delete unneeded bits, but uncompressing the data later on will lead to reduced quality in comparison with the original. Compressing and uncompressing content needs a large amount of system resources, especially CPU processing time, therefore any web hosting platform that uses compression in real time must have ample power to support that attribute. An example how data can be compressed is to replace a binary code such as 111111 with 6x1 i.e. "remembering" what number of consecutive 1s or 0s there should be instead of saving the actual code.

Data Compression in Hosting

The compression algorithm which we employ on the cloud internet hosting platform where your new hosting account will be created is called LZ4 and it is used by the state-of-the-art ZFS file system which powers the system. The algorithm is a lot better than the ones other file systems use as its compression ratio is much higher and it processes data considerably quicker. The speed is most noticeable when content is being uncompressed since this happens quicker than data can be read from a hard disk drive. As a result, LZ4 improves the performance of any Internet site hosted on a server which uses this particular algorithm. We use LZ4 in an additional way - its speed and compression ratio let us generate multiple daily backup copies of the whole content of all accounts and store them for thirty days. Not only do these backups take less space, but also their generation will not slow the servers down like it can often happen with some other file systems.

Data Compression in Semi-dedicated Servers

Your semi-dedicated server account shall be created on a cloud platform that runs using the state-of-the-art ZFS file system. The latter uses a compression algorithm named LZ4, which is significantly better than other algorithms with regard to compression ratio and speed. The gain is apparent 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. This is why sites running on a platform which uses LZ4 compression perform faster because the algorithm is most effective 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 take less space and they're generated a lot faster, which enables us to have multiple daily backups of all your files and databases.