Data compression is the compacting of information by reducing the number of bits that are stored or transmitted. Because of this, the compressed info will need considerably less disk space than the initial one, so extra content could be stored on the same amount of space. There're different compression algorithms that function in different ways and with some of them just the redundant bits are removed, which means that once the data is uncompressed, there's no decrease in quality. Others delete unnecessary bits, but uncompressing the data afterwards will result in reduced quality compared to the original. Compressing and uncompressing content takes a huge amount of system resources, particularly CPU processing time, so each and every web hosting platform that uses compression in real time must have ample power to support this feature. An example how data can be compressed is to replace a binary code such as 111111 with 6x1 i.e. "remembering" how many sequential 1s or 0s there should be instead of storing the entire code.

Data Compression in Web Hosting

The compression algorithm that we use on the cloud internet hosting platform where your new web hosting account shall be created is called LZ4 and it's applied by the leading-edge ZFS file system that powers the system. The algorithm is far better than the ones other file systems work with because its compression ratio is 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 hard disk drive. Consequently, LZ4 improves the performance of every website hosted on a server which uses this particular algorithm. We take full advantage of LZ4 in one more way - its speed and compression ratio make it possible for us to produce multiple daily backup copies of the entire content of all accounts and store them for one month. Not only do these backups take less space, but their generation won't slow the servers down like it can often happen with some other file systems.

Data Compression in Semi-dedicated Servers

In case you host your Internet sites in a semi-dedicated server account from our firm, you will be able to experience the advantages of LZ4 - the powerful compression algorithm used by the ZFS file system that is behind our advanced cloud web hosting platform. What differentiates LZ4 from all the other algorithms out there is that it has a better compression ratio and it is much faster, particularly when it comes to uncompressing website content. It does that even quicker than uncompressed data can be read from a hard disk drive, so your Internet sites will perform faster. The higher speed is at the expense of using lots of CPU processing time, that's not a problem for our platform because it consists of a large number of clusters working together. In combination with the superior performance, you'll have multiple daily backup copies at your disposal, so you will be able to recover any deleted content with a few clicks. The backups are available for an entire month and we can afford to keep them since they take a lot less space than conventional backups.