Data compression is the compacting of info by lowering the number of bits which are stored or transmitted. Thus, the compressed data requires considerably less disk space than the initial one, so additional content could be stored using the same amount of space. You will find various compression algorithms that function in different ways and with several of them only the redundant bits are removed, so once the data is uncompressed, there is no decrease in quality. Others remove excessive bits, but uncompressing the data afterwards will lead to reduced quality compared to the original. Compressing and uncompressing content consumes a significant amount of system resources, particularly CPU processing time, so each and every web hosting platform which employs compression in real time needs to have ample 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" what number of sequential 1s or 0s there should be instead of storing the whole code.

Data Compression in Cloud Website Hosting

The compression algorithm that we employ on the cloud internet hosting platform where your new cloud website hosting account shall be created is known as LZ4 and it's used by the cutting-edge ZFS file system which powers the system. The algorithm is greater than the ones other file systems employ because its compression ratio is a lot higher and it processes data a lot faster. The speed is most noticeable when content is being uncompressed as this happens more quickly than data can be read from a hdd. Therefore, LZ4 improves the performance of each and every Internet site hosted on a server that uses this particular algorithm. We take full advantage of LZ4 in one more way - its speed and compression ratio allow us to produce several daily backup copies of the whole content of all accounts and keep them for 30 days. Not only do the backups take less space, but their generation doesn't slow the servers down like it often happens with various other file systems.

Data Compression in Semi-dedicated Servers

The ZFS file system that 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 definitely the most efficient one when it comes to compressing and uncompressing web content, as its ratio is very high and it will uncompress data at a faster rate than the same data can be read from a hard disk drive if it were uncompressed. Thus, using LZ4 will speed up every website that runs on a platform where the algorithm is enabled. The high performance requires lots of CPU processing time, that is provided by the multitude of clusters working together as a part of our platform. What's more, LZ4 enables us to generate several backup copies of your content every day and keep them for a month as they will take a smaller amount of space than typical backups and will be generated considerably faster without loading the servers.