Data compression is the compacting of info by reducing the number of bits that are stored or transmitted. Consequently, the compressed information takes substantially less disk space than the original one, so additional content might be stored on identical amount of space. You can find various compression algorithms which function in different ways and with several of them just the redundant bits are removed, which means that once the info is uncompressed, there is no decrease in quality. Others erase unnecessary bits, but uncompressing the data subsequently will lead to lower quality in comparison with the original. Compressing and uncompressing content requires a large amount of system resources, especially CPU processing time, so any Internet hosting platform that uses compression in real time must 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" what number of sequential 1s or 0s there should be instead of keeping the actual code.

Data Compression in Shared Hosting

The compression algorithm that we use on the cloud hosting platform where your new shared hosting account shall be created is known as LZ4 and it is used by the exceptional ZFS file system that powers the platform. The algorithm is far better than the ones other file systems use because its compression ratio is much higher and it processes data a lot faster. The speed is most noticeable when content is being uncompressed since this happens quicker than info can be read from a hard disk. Therefore, LZ4 improves the performance of every Internet site located on a server which uses this algorithm. We use LZ4 in one more way - its speed and compression ratio make it possible for us to make multiple daily backup copies of the entire content of all accounts and keep them for one month. Not only do these backups take less space, but their generation will not slow the servers down like it can often happen with 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 innovative ZFS file system. The aforementioned uses a compression algorithm known as LZ4, which is a lot better than all the other algorithms regarding compression ratio and speed. The gain is apparent particularly when data is being uncompressed and not only is LZ4 faster than other algorithms, but it is also faster in uncompressing data than a system is in reading from a hard disk. This is why Internet sites running on a platform that employs LZ4 compression perform faster since the algorithm is most effective when it processes compressible data i.e. site content. An additional advantage of using LZ4 is that the backup copies of the semi-dedicated accounts which we keep take less space and they're generated quicker, which allows us to keep a number of daily backups of your files and databases.