Data compression is the reduction of the number of bits which need to be stored or transmitted and this process is really important in the internet hosting field since info kept on hard disk drives is usually compressed in order to take less space. You'll find different algorithms for compressing data and they provide different efficiency based on the content. Many of them remove only the redundant bits, so that no data will be lost, while others erase unneeded bits, which results in worse quality once your data is uncompressed. The process requires plenty of processing time, so a web hosting server needs to be powerful enough in order to be able to compress and uncompress data quickly. An instance how binary code can be compressed is by "remembering" that there're five sequential 1s, for example, rather than storing all five 1s.

Data Compression in Shared Website Hosting

The compression algorithm which we employ on the cloud internet hosting platform where your new shared website hosting account shall be created is called LZ4 and it is applied by the state-of-the-art ZFS file system that powers the system. The algorithm is superior to the ones other file systems employ as its compression ratio is much higher and it processes data significantly quicker. The speed is most noticeable when content is being uncompressed since this happens at a faster rate than information can be read from a hard disk. Because of this, LZ4 improves the performance of any site hosted on a server which uses the algorithm. We take advantage of LZ4 in one more way - its speed and compression ratio make it possible for us to make several daily backups of the whole content of all accounts and store them for 30 days. Not only do the backups take less space, but their generation will not slow the servers down like it often happens with alternative file systems.

Data Compression in Semi-dedicated Servers

The ZFS file system which runs on the cloud platform where your semi-dedicated server account will be created uses a powerful compression algorithm called LZ4. It's one of the best algorithms out there and definitely the best one when it comes to compressing and uncompressing website content, as its ratio is very high and it'll uncompress data at a faster rate than the same data can be read from a hard disk drive if it were uncompressed. Thus, using LZ4 will boost every website that runs on a platform where this algorithm is present. The high performance requires plenty of CPU processing time, that's provided by the numerous clusters working together as part of our platform. Furthermore, LZ4 makes it possible for us to generate several backup copies of your content every day and save them for a month as they'll take a reduced amount of space than standard backups and will be generated considerably quicker without loading the servers.