Data compression is the compacting of info by decreasing the number of bits which are stored or transmitted. This way, the compressed data will take less disk space than the original one, so more content might be stored on the same amount of space. There are many different compression algorithms that function in different ways and with a lot of them just the redundant bits are removed, which means that once the info is uncompressed, there is no decrease in quality. Others delete unneeded bits, but uncompressing the data following that will lead to lower quality compared to the original. Compressing and uncompressing content takes a significant amount of system resources, especially CPU processing time, so each and every web hosting platform that uses compression in real time should have sufficient power to support this attribute. An example how info can be compressed is to replace a binary code such as 111111 with 6x1 i.e. "remembering" how many consecutive 1s or 0s there should be instead of storing the whole code.

Data Compression in Cloud Hosting

The compression algorithm that we employ on the cloud internet hosting platform where your new cloud hosting account shall be created is called LZ4 and it's used by the exceptional ZFS file system that powers the system. The algorithm is greater than the ones other file systems employ as its compression ratio is much higher and it processes data a lot faster. The speed is most noticeable when content is being uncompressed as this happens even faster than info can be read from a hdd. Consequently, LZ4 improves the performance of any site hosted on a server which uses the algorithm. We use LZ4 in an additional way - its speed and compression ratio make it possible for us to make a couple of daily backup copies of the whole content of all accounts and store them for a month. Not only do our backups take less space, but in addition their generation will not slow the servers down like it can often happen with some other file systems.

Data Compression in Semi-dedicated Servers

The ZFS file system which runs on the cloud platform where your semi-dedicated server account will be created uses a powerful compression algorithm called LZ4. It's one of the best algorithms out there and positively the most efficient one when it comes to compressing and uncompressing web content, as its ratio is very high and it'll uncompress data at a higher speed than the same data can be read from a hard drive if it were uncompressed. In this way, using LZ4 will speed up any Internet site that runs on a platform where this algorithm is present. The high performance requires plenty of CPU processing time, which is provided by the multitude of clusters working together as part of our platform. In addition, LZ4 makes it possible for us to generate several backup copies of your content every day and have them for one month as they'll take a reduced amount of space than standard backups and will be created considerably quicker without loading the servers.