The term data compression means decreasing the number of bits of info which has to be stored or transmitted. This can be achieved with or without the loss of data, so what will be erased in the course of the compression will be either redundant data or unneeded one. When the data is uncompressed later on, in the first case the data and its quality shall be identical, while in the second case the quality will be worse. There're various compression algorithms that are better for various sort of info. Compressing and uncompressing data in most cases takes lots of processing time, therefore the server performing the action needs to have plenty of resources in order to be able to process your info fast enough. A simple example how information can be compressed is to store how many consecutive positions should have 1 and how many should have 0 in the binary code instead of storing the particular 1s and 0s.

Data Compression in Website Hosting

The compression algorithm which we use on the cloud web hosting platform where your new website hosting account shall be created is named LZ4 and it's used by the advanced ZFS file system that powers the platform. The algorithm is better than the ones other file systems work with as its compression ratio is much higher and it processes data considerably faster. The speed is most noticeable when content is being uncompressed since this happens at a faster rate than data can be read from a hard disk. For that reason, LZ4 improves the performance of any website stored on a server that uses the algorithm. We take advantage of LZ4 in one more way - its speed and compression ratio make it possible for us to make a couple of daily backups of the whole content of all accounts and keep them for a month. Not only do these backup copies take less space, but their generation will not slow the servers down like it often happens with some other file systems.

Data Compression in Semi-dedicated Hosting

Your semi-dedicated hosting account will be created on a cloud platform that runs on the state-of-the-art ZFS file system. The aforementioned uses a compression algorithm called LZ4, which is far better than all other algorithms when it comes to compression ratio and speed. The gain is apparent especially when data is being uncompressed and not only is LZ4 faster than other algorithms, but it is also quicker in uncompressing data than a system is in reading from a HDD. That is why Internet sites running on a platform which employs LZ4 compression perform faster because the algorithm is most efficient when it processes compressible data i.e. website content. A further advantage of using LZ4 is that the backup copies of the semi-dedicated accounts that we keep take significantly less space and they're generated quicker, which allows us to have a couple of daily backups of your files and databases.