Data compression is the compacting of information by decreasing the number of bits that are stored or transmitted. Because of this, the compressed data needs considerably less disk space than the original one, so much more content can be stored using identical amount of space. You'll find many different compression algorithms which function in different ways and with many of them just the redundant bits are removed, so once the info is uncompressed, there's no decrease in quality. Others erase excessive bits, but uncompressing the data later will lead to lower quality in comparison with the original. Compressing and uncompressing content takes a large amount of system resources, particularly CPU processing time, so any web hosting platform that employs compression in real time should have enough power to support that feature. An example how data 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 saving the whole code.

Data Compression in Web Hosting

The ZFS file system which is run on our cloud Internet hosting platform uses a compression algorithm identified as LZ4. The aforementioned is considerably faster and better than every other algorithm you'll find, especially for compressing and uncompressing non-binary data i.e. internet content. LZ4 even uncompresses data quicker than it is read from a hard disk, which improves the performance of Internet sites hosted on ZFS-based platforms. Because the algorithm compresses data very well and it does that very quickly, we're able to generate several backups of all the content kept in the web hosting accounts on our servers every day. Both your content and its backups will require reduced space and since both ZFS and LZ4 work extremely fast, the backup generation will not influence the performance of the hosting servers where your content will be kept.

Data Compression in Semi-dedicated Hosting

Your semi-dedicated hosting account shall be created on a cloud platform which runs on the cutting-edge ZFS file system. The aforementioned uses a compression algorithm called LZ4, that is much better than various other algorithms regarding compression ratio and speed. The gain is significant especially when data is being uncompressed and not only is LZ4 a lot faster than other algorithms, but it is also quicker in uncompressing data than a system is in reading from a hard drive. That is why Internet sites running on a platform which employs LZ4 compression perform better since the algorithm is most efficient when it processes compressible data i.e. website content. A further advantage of using LZ4 is that the backup copies of the semi-dedicated accounts that we keep take much less space and are generated faster, which allows us to keep several daily backups of your files and databases.