The term data compression refers to reducing the number of bits of information which should be stored or transmitted. This can be done with or without the loss of info, which means that what will be removed in the course of the compression shall be either redundant data or unneeded one. When the data is uncompressed later on, in the first case the content and the quality shall be the same, whereas in the second case the quality shall be worse. You can find various compression algorithms which are more effective for various type of data. Compressing and uncompressing data normally takes lots of processing time, which means that the server executing the action should have ample resources in order to be able to process the info quick enough. An example how information can be compressed is to store just how many sequential positions should have 1 and just how many should have 0 inside the binary code as an alternative to storing the actual 1s and 0s.

Data Compression in Cloud Web Hosting

The compression algorithm which we use on the cloud web hosting platform where your new cloud web hosting account shall be created is called LZ4 and it's used by the advanced ZFS file system that powers the system. The algorithm is greater than the ones other file systems use because its compression ratio is a lot higher and it processes data significantly quicker. The speed is most noticeable when content is being uncompressed since this happens even faster than information can be read from a hard disk. Because of this, LZ4 improves the performance of every Internet site stored on a server that uses the algorithm. We take full advantage of LZ4 in one more way - its speed and compression ratio make it possible for us to generate several daily backup copies of the entire content of all accounts and keep them for one month. Not only do our backup copies take less space, but also their generation will not slow the servers down like it can often happen with various other file systems.

Data Compression in Semi-dedicated Hosting

Your semi-dedicated hosting account will be created on a cloud platform which runs using the state-of-the-art ZFS file system. The aforementioned uses a compression algorithm named LZ4, that is a lot better than all the other algorithms when it comes to compression ratio and speed. The gain is significant particularly when data is being uncompressed and not only is LZ4 much faster than other algorithms, but it is also quicker in uncompressing data than a system is in reading from a hard disk. This is why websites running on a platform that uses LZ4 compression perform faster as the algorithm is most effective when it processes compressible data i.e. site content. Another advantage of using LZ4 is that the backups of the semi-dedicated accounts which we keep need significantly less space and they're generated quicker, which allows us to have a couple of daily backups of all your files and databases.