Data compression is the compacting of information by lowering the number of bits that are stored or transmitted. As a result, the compressed data requires considerably less disk space than the original one, so much more content could be stored using the same amount of space. You'll find different compression algorithms that function in different ways and with some of them just the redundant bits are erased, so once the info is uncompressed, there's no loss of quality. Others delete unneeded bits, but uncompressing the data at a later time will result in reduced quality compared to the original. Compressing and uncompressing content takes a huge amount of system resources, especially CPU processing time, so any web hosting platform that employs compression in real time should have sufficient power to support that attribute. An example how data can be compressed is to substitute 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 whole code.

Data Compression in Shared Website Hosting

The compression algorithm that we work with on the cloud internet hosting platform where your new shared website hosting account will be created is named LZ4 and it's applied by the state-of-the-art ZFS file system which powers the system. The algorithm is superior to the ones other file systems work with as its compression ratio is a lot higher and it processes data considerably quicker. The speed is most noticeable when content is being uncompressed as this happens at a faster rate than information can be read from a hard disk drive. As a result, LZ4 improves the performance of each website stored on a server which uses the algorithm. We use LZ4 in one more way - its speed and compression ratio make it possible for us to generate several daily backup copies of the entire content of all accounts and store them for thirty days. Not only do the backups take less space, but also their generation won't slow the servers down like it often happens with various other 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 is among the best algorithms out there and certainly the most efficient one when it comes to compressing and uncompressing website content, as its ratio is very high and it'll uncompress data much faster than the same data can be read from a hard drive if it were uncompressed. That way, using LZ4 will boost any Internet site that runs on a platform where the algorithm is enabled. The high performance requires a lot of CPU processing time, that is provided by the numerous clusters working together as a part of our platform. What's more, LZ4 enables us to generate several backups of your content every day and save them for a month as they'll take a smaller amount of space than regular backups and will be created much more quickly without loading the servers.