Data compression is the compacting of information by decreasing the number of bits that are stored or transmitted. This way, the compressed information takes much less disk space than the initial one, so extra content can be stored on the same amount of space. You can find various compression algorithms that function in different ways and with a number of them just the redundant bits are erased, so once the data is uncompressed, there's no decrease in quality. Others erase unnecessary bits, but uncompressing the data subsequently will result in reduced quality in comparison with the original. Compressing and uncompressing content needs a huge amount of system resources, especially CPU processing time, therefore every web hosting platform that employs 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" the number of consecutive 1s or 0s there should be instead of keeping the actual code.
Data Compression in Cloud Website Hosting
The compression algorithm that we employ on the cloud internet hosting platform where your new cloud website hosting account shall be created is named LZ4 and it is used by the advanced ZFS file system that powers the system. The algorithm is better than the ones other file systems use since its compression ratio is higher and it processes data significantly faster. The speed is most noticeable when content is being uncompressed as this happens faster than info can be read from a hard drive. For that reason, LZ4 improves the performance of any Internet site hosted on a server which uses this algorithm. We take advantage of LZ4 in one more way - its speed and compression ratio make it possible for us to make multiple daily backups of the entire content of all accounts and keep them for 30 days. Not only do the backups take less space, but also their generation won't slow the servers down like it often happens with some 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 is among the best algorithms out there and positively the best one when it comes to compressing and uncompressing website content, as its ratio is very high and it can uncompress data a lot faster than the same data can be read from a hard drive if it were uncompressed. In this way, using LZ4 will accelerate every site that runs on a platform where this algorithm is present. This high performance requires a lot of CPU processing time, that is provided by the numerous clusters working together as part of our platform. What's more, LZ4 makes it possible for us to generate several backup copies of your content every day and save them for a month as they will take a smaller amount of space than standard backups and will be created considerably faster without loading the servers.