Data compression is the compacting of data by lowering the number of bits which are stored or transmitted. This way, the compressed information requires much less disk space than the initial one, so much more content could be stored using identical amount of space. There are many different compression algorithms which function in different ways and with several of them only the redundant bits are deleted, so once the info is uncompressed, there's no decrease in quality. Others erase excessive bits, but uncompressing the data at a later time will result in lower quality in comparison with the original. Compressing and uncompressing content requires a huge amount of system resources, especially CPU processing time, so each and every Internet hosting platform that employs compression in real time should have ample power to support this feature. An example how info can be compressed is to substitute a binary code such as 111111 with 6x1 i.e. "remembering" how many sequential 1s or 0s there should be instead of saving the actual code.
Data Compression in Website Hosting
The compression algorithm used by the ZFS file system that runs on our cloud internet hosting platform is called LZ4. It can boost the performance of any site hosted in a website hosting account with us because not only does it compress info more effectively than algorithms employed by alternative file systems, but also uncompresses data at speeds which are higher than the HDD reading speeds. This is achieved by using a great deal of CPU processing time, that is not a problem for our platform since it uses clusters of powerful servers working together. A further advantage of LZ4 is that it enables us to create backup copies much more quickly and on reduced disk space, so we shall have multiple daily backups of your databases and files and their generation won't influence the performance of the servers. This way, we can always restore all the content that you could have erased by accident.
Data Compression in Semi-dedicated Hosting
Your semi-dedicated hosting account shall be created on a cloud platform that is run on the advanced ZFS file system. The aforementioned uses a compression algorithm called LZ4, that's significantly better than all the other algorithms regarding compression ratio and speed. The gain is significant particularly 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 HDD. That's why sites running on a platform that employs LZ4 compression perform faster as the algorithm is most efficient when it processes compressible data i.e. website content. A further advantage of using LZ4 is that the backup copies of the semi-dedicated accounts that we keep require less space and they are generated a lot faster, which enables us to store several daily backups of all your files and databases.