Data compression is the compacting of data by reducing the number of bits that are stored or transmitted. Consequently, the compressed data will need less disk space than the initial one, so much more content might be stored using identical amount of space. There are different compression algorithms that work in different ways and with a number of them only the redundant bits are erased, so once the data is uncompressed, there is no loss of quality. Others erase excessive bits, but uncompressing the data afterwards will lead to lower quality compared to the original. Compressing and uncompressing content needs a large amount of system resources, especially CPU processing time, so any Internet hosting platform which uses compression in real time must have ample power to support that feature. An example how information can be compressed is to substitute a binary code such as 111111 with 6x1 i.e. "remembering" what number of sequential 1s or 0s there should be instead of keeping the entire code.

Data Compression in Cloud Web Hosting

The compression algorithm that we use on the cloud hosting platform where your new cloud web hosting account will be created is called LZ4 and it's applied by the exceptional ZFS file system that powers the platform. The algorithm is superior to the ones other file systems employ since 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 data can be read from a hard disk drive. As a result, LZ4 improves the performance of each and every Internet site hosted on a server that uses the algorithm. We take advantage of LZ4 in one more way - its speed and compression ratio allow us to generate a couple of daily backups of the full content of all accounts and store them for one month. Not only do these backups take less space, but their generation will not slow the servers down like it can often happen with 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 website content, as its ratio is very high and it can uncompress data much faster than the same data can be read from a hard disk drive if it were uncompressed. Thus, using LZ4 will speed up any kind of Internet site that runs on a platform where the algorithm is enabled. This high performance requires plenty of CPU processing time, that is provided by the multitude of clusters working together as part of our platform. In addition, LZ4 makes it possible for us to generate several backups of your content every day and have them for one month as they'll take a smaller amount of space than regular backups and will be generated considerably quicker without loading the servers.