Data compression is the decrease of the number of bits that need to be stored or transmitted and this process is quite important in the web hosting field because info located on HDDs is generally compressed in order to take less space. You can find different algorithms for compressing data and they have different efficiency based on the content. A lot of them remove only the redundant bits, so no data can be lost, while others delete unneeded bits, which results in worse quality when the particular data is uncompressed. This process consumes plenty of processing time, so an internet hosting server should be powerful enough so as to be able to compress and uncompress data in real time. One example how binary code may be compressed is by "remembering" that there're five sequential 1s, for example, as an alternative to storing all five 1s.

Data Compression in Cloud Website Hosting

The compression algorithm used by the ZFS file system which runs on our cloud web hosting platform is called LZ4. It can improve the performance of any site hosted in a cloud website hosting account on our end as not only does it compress data more effectively than algorithms used by various file systems, but it also uncompresses data at speeds that are higher than the hard disk reading speeds. This is achieved by using a great deal of CPU processing time, which is not a problem for our platform for the reason that it uses clusters of powerful servers working together. A further advantage of LZ4 is that it enables us to create backup copies more quickly and on less disk space, so we will have multiple daily backups of your databases and files and their generation won't affect the performance of the servers. That way, we can always restore the content that you may have erased by mistake.

Data Compression in Semi-dedicated Hosting

Your semi-dedicated hosting account will be created on a cloud platform that runs using the leading-edge ZFS file system. The latter uses a compression algorithm known as LZ4, that's a lot better than other algorithms with regard to compression ratio and speed. The gain is visible 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 drive. This is why sites running on a platform that uses LZ4 compression perform better because the algorithm is most effective when it processes compressible data i.e. site content. Another advantage of using LZ4 is that the backups of the semi-dedicated accounts that we keep require less space and they are generated a lot quicker, which enables us to have a couple of daily backups of your files and databases.