Data compression is the decrease of the number of bits which have to be stored or transmitted and the process is really important in the internet hosting field due to the fact that info filed on HDDs is generally compressed to take less space. There're different algorithms for compressing info and they offer different efficiency depending on the content. Many of them remove only the redundant bits, so that no data will be lost, while others remove unnecessary bits, which results in worse quality once the particular data is uncompressed. The process uses plenty of processing time, so a web hosting server needs to be powerful enough so as to be able to compress and uncompress data instantly. One example how binary code could be compressed is by "remembering" that there're five sequential 1s, for example, rather than storing all five 1s.

Data Compression in Shared Hosting

The compression algorithm that we employ on the cloud internet hosting platform where your new shared hosting account will be created is called LZ4 and it is applied by the exceptional ZFS file system that powers the platform. The algorithm is greater than the ones other file systems work with as its compression ratio is higher and it processes data a lot faster. The speed is most noticeable when content is being uncompressed as this happens more quickly than information can be read from a hard disk drive. Because of this, LZ4 improves the performance of each and every site located on a server that uses this algorithm. We use LZ4 in an additional way - its speed and compression ratio make it possible for us to make a number of daily backup copies of the entire content of all accounts and store them for a month. Not only do these backup copies take less space, but in addition their generation won't slow the servers down like it can often happen with various other file systems.

Data Compression in Semi-dedicated Servers

If you host your sites in a semi-dedicated server account with our firm, you can experience the advantages of LZ4 - the powerful compression algorithm employed by the ZFS file system that is behind our advanced cloud web hosting platform. What separates LZ4 from all other algorithms out there is that it has a better compression ratio and it is way quicker, in particular with regard to uncompressing website content. It does that even quicker than uncompressed information can be read from a hard drive, so your websites will perform faster. The higher speed is at the expense of using a considerable amount of CPU processing time, that is not a problem for our platform because it consists of a large number of clusters working together. Besides the better performance, you'll have multiple daily backup copies at your disposal, so you will be able to recover any deleted content with just a few clicks. The backups are available for a whole month and we can afford to store them because they need a lot less space than ordinary backups.