Data compression is the reduction of the number of bits that need to be saved or transmitted and the process is quite important in the web hosting field since info stored on hard disk drives is typically compressed in order to take less space. You will find many different algorithms for compressing info and they offer different efficiency based on the content. A lot of them remove only the redundant bits, so that no data can be lost, while others erase unneeded bits, which leads to worse quality when the data is uncompressed. The process consumes a lot of processing time, so an internet hosting server has to be powerful enough to be able to compress and uncompress data right away. An illustration how binary code could be compressed is by "remembering" that there are five consecutive 1s, for example, rather than storing all five 1s.

Data Compression in Shared Hosting

The compression algorithm which we employ on the cloud internet hosting platform where your new shared hosting account shall be created is known as LZ4 and it is used by the revolutionary ZFS file system which 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 considerably faster. The speed is most noticeable when content is being uncompressed as this happens even faster than data can be read from a hard drive. Because of this, LZ4 improves the performance of each Internet site hosted 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 produce a couple of daily backups of the whole content of all accounts and keep them for a month. Not only do our backup copies take less space, but in addition their generation does not slow the servers down like it often happens with some other file systems.

Data Compression in Semi-dedicated Hosting

Your semi-dedicated hosting account shall be created on a cloud platform which runs on the leading-edge ZFS file system. The latter uses a compression algorithm known as LZ4, which is far better than all other algorithms when it comes to compression ratio and speed. The gain is apparent particularly when data is being uncompressed and not only is LZ4 quicker than other algorithms, but it is also faster in uncompressing data than a system is in reading from a hard disk. That's why websites running on a platform which employs LZ4 compression perform faster because the algorithm is most effective when it processes compressible data i.e. website content. One more advantage of using LZ4 is that the backups of the semi-dedicated accounts which we keep require much less space and are generated faster, which enables us to keep multiple daily backups of all your files and databases.