Data compression is the compacting of information by reducing the number of bits that are stored or transmitted. As a result, the compressed information takes substantially less disk space than the original one, so a lot more content can be stored on identical amount of space. There're various compression algorithms which function in different ways and with several of them only the redundant bits are deleted, so once the data is uncompressed, there is no loss of quality. Others erase unnecessary bits, but uncompressing the data later will lead to lower quality compared to the original. Compressing and uncompressing content requires a huge amount of system resources, and in particular CPU processing time, so each and every Internet hosting platform that uses compression in real time must have enough power to support that attribute. An example how data can be compressed is to replace a binary code such as 111111 with 6x1 i.e. "remembering" what number of consecutive 1s or 0s there should be instead of saving the whole code.

Data Compression in Web Hosting

The compression algorithm used by the ZFS file system that runs on our cloud hosting platform is known as LZ4. It can enhance the performance of any Internet site hosted in a web hosting account on our end since not only does it compress info much better than algorithms used by various other file systems, but it also uncompresses data at speeds which are higher than the hard drive reading speeds. This can be done by using a great deal of CPU processing time, that is not a problem for our platform considering the fact that it uses clusters of powerful servers working together. A further advantage of LZ4 is that it enables us to generate backup copies at a higher speed and on reduced disk space, so we can have multiple daily backups of your files and databases and their generation won't change the performance of the servers. In this way, we could always restore the content that you may have removed by mistake.

Data Compression in Semi-dedicated Hosting

Your semi-dedicated hosting account shall be created on a cloud platform which runs on the advanced ZFS file system. The latter uses a compression algorithm named LZ4, that is much better than alternative algorithms regarding compression ratio and speed. The gain is noticeable particularly when data is being uncompressed and not only is LZ4 faster than other algorithms, but it is also faster in uncompressing data than a system is in reading from a hard disk drive. That's why Internet sites running on a platform which uses LZ4 compression perform faster because the algorithm is most effective when it processes compressible data i.e. site content. One more advantage of using LZ4 is that the backup copies of the semi-dedicated accounts which we keep take less space and are generated quicker, which allows us to store a number of daily backups of all your files and databases.