Data compression is the lowering of the number of bits which need to be saved or transmitted and this process is really important in the internet hosting field since data filed on hard drives is often compressed in order to take less space. You can find various algorithms for compressing data and they offer different efficiency based on the content. A lot of them remove just the redundant bits, so no data can be lost, while others erase unneeded bits, which results in worse quality once the particular data is uncompressed. The process requires plenty of processing time, therefore a hosting server needs to be powerful enough in order to be able to compress and uncompress data instantly. An example how binary code can be compressed is by "remembering" that there're five consecutive 1s, for example, rather than storing all five 1s.

Data Compression in Hosting

The compression algorithm which we employ on the cloud hosting platform where your new hosting account shall be created is called LZ4 and it is applied by the advanced ZFS file system that powers the platform. The algorithm is far better than the ones other file systems work with since its compression ratio is a lot higher and it processes data significantly faster. The speed is most noticeable when content is being uncompressed as this happens quicker than information can be read from a hard disk. Therefore, LZ4 improves the performance of each and every Internet site located on a server that uses the algorithm. We take advantage of LZ4 in one more way - its speed and compression ratio let us generate several daily backups of the whole content of all accounts and store them for 30 days. Not only do these backups take less space, but their generation won't slow the servers down like it can often happen 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's among the best algorithms out there and positively the most efficient one when it comes to compressing and uncompressing web 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. This way, using LZ4 will quicken every Internet site that runs on a platform where this algorithm is enabled. The high performance requires plenty of CPU processing time, which is provided by the large number of clusters working together as part of our platform. Furthermore, LZ4 enables us to generate several backup copies of your content every day and save them for a month as they'll take much less space than regular backups and will be generated much faster without loading the servers.