Data compression is the compacting of info by decreasing the number of bits that are stored or transmitted. In this way, the compressed information will require substantially less disk space than the initial one, so more content could be stored on the same amount of space. You'll find different compression algorithms which work in different ways and with many of them just the redundant bits are deleted, so once the info is uncompressed, there is no decrease in quality. Others remove excessive bits, but uncompressing the data at a later time will lead to reduced quality compared to the original. Compressing and uncompressing content takes a significant amount of system resources, and in particular CPU processing time, so each and every web hosting platform that uses compression in real time must have enough power to support this feature. An example how information can be compressed is to replace a binary code such as 111111 with 6x1 i.e. "remembering" the number of sequential 1s or 0s there should be instead of saving the entire code.

Data Compression in Hosting

The compression algorithm which we work with on the cloud internet hosting platform where your new hosting account shall be created is called LZ4 and it's used by the advanced ZFS file system which powers the platform. The algorithm is a lot better than the ones other file systems use because its compression ratio is much higher and it processes data significantly quicker. The speed is most noticeable when content is being uncompressed since this happens even faster than information can be read from a hard drive. Consequently, LZ4 improves the performance of any website located on a server that uses the algorithm. We take full advantage of LZ4 in an additional way - its speed and compression ratio make it possible for us to make several daily backups of the whole content of all accounts and store them for one month. Not only do these backups take less space, but their generation won't slow the servers down like it often happens with alternative file systems.

Data Compression in Semi-dedicated Hosting

The ZFS file system that runs on the cloud platform where your semi-dedicated hosting account will be created uses a powerful compression algorithm called LZ4. It's among the best algorithms out there and positively the most efficient one when it comes to compressing and uncompressing website content, as its ratio is very high and it will uncompress data faster than the same data can be read from a hard drive if it were uncompressed. Thus, using LZ4 will speed up any site that runs on a platform where this algorithm is enabled. This high performance requires plenty of CPU processing time, that's provided by the numerous clusters working together as a part of our platform. In addition, LZ4 enables us to generate several backups of your content every day and have them for a month as they will take a reduced amount of space than standard backups and will be generated much more quickly without loading the servers.