Data compression is the compacting of data by reducing the number of bits which are stored or transmitted. In this way, the compressed information will need less disk space than the original one, so much more content could be stored on identical amount of space. You'll find many different compression algorithms that function in different ways and with a lot of them only the redundant bits are removed, therefore once the info is uncompressed, there is no decrease in quality. Others delete unneeded bits, but uncompressing the data following that will lead to reduced quality in comparison with the original. Compressing and uncompressing content requires a huge amount of system resources, especially CPU processing time, therefore each and every web hosting platform that uses compression in real time needs to have adequate power to support that attribute. An example how information can be compressed is to replace a binary code such as 111111 with 6x1 i.e. "remembering" what number of consecutive 1s or 0s there should be instead of storing the entire code.

Data Compression in Cloud Website Hosting

The compression algorithm which we work with on the cloud hosting platform where your new cloud website hosting account will be created is called LZ4 and it's applied by the revolutionary ZFS file system that powers the platform. The algorithm is a lot better than the ones other file systems use because its compression ratio is much higher and it processes data significantly faster. The speed is most noticeable when content is being uncompressed since this happens more quickly than info can be read from a hdd. Therefore, LZ4 improves the performance of each and every website stored on a server that uses the algorithm. We use LZ4 in an additional way - its speed and compression ratio make it possible for us to make multiple daily backup copies of the full content of all accounts and store them for thirty days. Not only do the backup copies take less space, but their generation does not slow the servers down like it often happens with many 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 among the best algorithms out there and positively the most efficient one when it comes to compressing and uncompressing website content, as its ratio is very high and it will uncompress data much faster than the same data can be read from a hard disk drive if it were uncompressed. In this way, using LZ4 will quicken any kind of website that runs on a platform where the algorithm is present. The high performance requires plenty of CPU processing time, which is provided by the great number of clusters working together as a part of our platform. In addition, LZ4 makes it possible for us to generate several backup copies of your content every day and save them for one month as they'll take much less space than typical backups and will be generated much faster without loading the servers.