Data compression is the compacting of information by decreasing the number of bits that are stored or transmitted. In this way, the compressed info will require less disk space than the original one, so a lot more content can be stored on identical amount of space. You will find many different compression algorithms which function in different ways and with a number of them only the redundant bits are removed, so once the information is uncompressed, there is no decrease in quality. Others erase unnecessary bits, but uncompressing the data subsequently will lead to lower quality in comparison with the original. Compressing and uncompressing content requires a huge amount of system resources, particularly CPU processing time, therefore every web hosting platform that employs compression in real time must have sufficient power to support this 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 storing the entire code.

Data Compression in Hosting

The compression algorithm which we use on the cloud internet hosting platform where your new hosting account shall be created is known as LZ4 and it is applied by the revolutionary ZFS file system which powers the platform. The algorithm is far better than the ones other file systems use since its compression ratio is higher and it processes data considerably quicker. The speed is most noticeable when content is being uncompressed since this happens at a faster rate than info can be read from a hdd. Consequently, LZ4 improves the performance of any site located on a server which uses this particular algorithm. We take full advantage of LZ4 in one more way - its speed and compression ratio allow us to generate a couple of daily backups of the entire content of all accounts and keep them for 30 days. Not only do our backups take less space, but also their generation does not slow the servers down like it can often happen with various other file systems.

Data Compression in Semi-dedicated Servers

If you host your Internet sites in a semi-dedicated server account with our firm, you'll be able to experience the advantages of LZ4 - the powerful compression algorithm used by the ZFS file system that's behind our advanced cloud hosting platform. What differentiates LZ4 from all of the other algorithms out there is that it has an improved compression ratio and it is considerably quicker, particularly when it comes to uncompressing website content. It does that even faster than uncompressed data can be read from a hard drive, so your websites will perform faster. The higher speed is at the expense of using plenty of CPU processing time, which is not a problem for our platform as it consists of multiple clusters working together. Besides the improved performance, you will also have multiple daily backups at your disposal, so you could restore any deleted content with a few clicks. The backups are available for an entire month and we can afford to keep them because they need significantly less space compared to conventional backups.