Data compression is the compacting of information by lowering the number of bits that are stored or transmitted. This way, the compressed info will require much less disk space than the initial one, so extra content could be stored using identical amount of space. You'll find various compression algorithms which work in different ways and with many of them only the redundant bits are removed, which means that once the information is uncompressed, there's no loss of quality. Others erase unneeded bits, but uncompressing the data at a later time will result in reduced quality compared to the original. Compressing and uncompressing content takes a significant amount of system resources, in particular CPU processing time, therefore every hosting platform that uses compression in real time should have adequate power to support this 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 sequential 1s or 0s there should be instead of keeping the actual code.

Data Compression in Cloud Hosting

The compression algorithm that we work with on the cloud internet hosting platform where your new cloud hosting account shall be created is called LZ4 and it's used by the leading-edge ZFS file system that powers the system. The algorithm is much better than the ones other file systems work with because its compression ratio is higher and it processes data a lot quicker. The speed is most noticeable when content is being uncompressed as this happens even faster than information can be read from a hard disk. Consequently, LZ4 improves the performance of any Internet site hosted on a server which uses this particular algorithm. We take full advantage of LZ4 in an additional way - its speed and compression ratio make it possible for us to generate several daily backup copies of the full content of all accounts and store them for a month. Not only do the backups take less space, but in addition their generation will not slow the servers down like it often happens with various other file systems.

Data Compression in Semi-dedicated Servers

Your semi-dedicated server account shall be created on a cloud platform which is run on the leading-edge ZFS file system. The latter uses a compression algorithm called LZ4, which is much better than alternative algorithms regarding compression ratio and speed. The gain is significant especially when data is being uncompressed and not only is LZ4 quicker than other algorithms, but it is also quicker in uncompressing data than a system is in reading from a hard disk. This is why Internet sites running on a platform which employs LZ4 compression perform better because the algorithm is most effective when it processes compressible data i.e. web content. A further advantage of using LZ4 is that the backup copies of the semi-dedicated accounts which we keep need much less space and are generated quicker, which enables us to keep a couple of daily backups of all your files and databases.