The term data compression means decreasing the number of bits of information which needs to be stored or transmitted. This can be done with or without losing info, so what will be removed in the course of the compression shall be either redundant data or unneeded one. When the data is uncompressed subsequently, in the first case the info and the quality will be identical, while in the second case the quality shall be worse. There are various compression algorithms that are more effective for various type of info. Compressing and uncompressing data in most cases takes plenty of processing time, therefore the server executing the action should have enough resources in order to be able to process your info quick enough. A simple example how information can be compressed is to store just how many consecutive positions should have 1 and how many should have 0 within the binary code instead of storing the particular 1s and 0s.

Data Compression in Web Hosting

The compression algorithm used by the ZFS file system that runs on our cloud hosting platform is called LZ4. It can improve the performance of any website hosted in a web hosting account on our end because not only does it compress info more efficiently than algorithms employed by alternative file systems, but it also uncompresses data at speeds that are higher than the HDD reading speeds. This is achieved by using a lot of CPU processing time, which is not a problem for our platform due to the fact that it uses clusters of powerful servers working together. A further advantage of LZ4 is that it enables us to create backup copies a lot faster and on reduced disk space, so we can have multiple daily backups of your files and databases and their generation will not affect the performance of the servers. In this way, we can always restore all of the content that you may have removed by mistake.

Data Compression in Semi-dedicated Servers

Your semi-dedicated server account will be created on a cloud platform which runs on the innovative ZFS file system. The latter uses a compression algorithm called LZ4, that is significantly better than other algorithms with regard to compression ratio and speed. The gain is noticeable especially 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. That is why sites running on a platform which employs LZ4 compression perform faster as the algorithm is most effective when it processes compressible data i.e. website content. An additional advantage of using LZ4 is that the backups of the semi-dedicated accounts that we keep need much less space and they're generated faster, which enables us to keep multiple daily backups of your files and databases.