Data compression is the compacting of information by lowering the number of bits which are stored or transmitted. Because of this, the compressed info will require much less disk space than the original one, so a lot more content can be stored on identical amount of space. There are different compression algorithms which work in different ways and with many of them only the redundant bits are removed, therefore once the data is uncompressed, there is no decrease in quality. Others delete excessive bits, but uncompressing the data at a later time will result in lower quality in comparison with the original. Compressing and uncompressing content requires a large amount of system resources, especially CPU processing time, therefore each and every hosting platform which uses compression in real time must have ample power to support this attribute. An example how information 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 entire code.

Data Compression in Cloud Hosting

The compression algorithm which we employ on the cloud internet hosting platform where your new cloud hosting account shall be created is named LZ4 and it is applied by the cutting-edge ZFS file system that powers the platform. The algorithm is better than the ones other file systems use as its compression ratio is a lot higher and it processes data a lot quicker. The speed is most noticeable when content is being uncompressed as this happens more quickly than info can be read from a hard disk. For that reason, LZ4 improves the performance of every Internet site located on a server which uses this particular algorithm. We use LZ4 in an additional way - its speed and compression ratio make it possible for us to generate a number of daily backup copies of the full content of all accounts and store them for 30 days. Not only do these backups take less space, but in addition their generation does not slow the servers down like it often happens with various other file systems.

Data Compression in Semi-dedicated Servers

Your semi-dedicated server account shall be created on a cloud platform which is run on the leading-edge ZFS file system. The latter uses a compression algorithm named LZ4, that's a lot better than all the other algorithms with regard to compression ratio and speed. The gain is significant particularly 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 HDD. Because of this websites running on a platform which uses LZ4 compression perform better as the algorithm is most effective when it processes compressible data i.e. site content. An additional advantage of using LZ4 is that the backups of the semi-dedicated accounts which we keep need much less space and are generated faster, which enables us to have a number of daily backups of all your files and databases.