Data compression is the compacting of info by reducing the number of bits that are stored or transmitted. As a result, the compressed data will require less disk space than the original one, so a lot more content can be stored on the same amount of space. You'll find various compression algorithms which work in different ways and with many of them only the redundant bits are removed, so once the information is uncompressed, there's no decrease in quality. Others remove unnecessary bits, but uncompressing the data later on will lead to lower quality in comparison with the original. Compressing and uncompressing content takes a huge amount of system resources, and in particular CPU processing time, so every web hosting platform that uses compression in real time needs to have sufficient power to support this attribute. An example how data can be compressed is to substitute a binary code such as 111111 with 6x1 i.e. "remembering" what number of consecutive 1s or 0s there should be instead of keeping the entire code.

Data Compression in Shared Hosting

The compression algorithm used by the ZFS file system that runs on our cloud internet hosting platform is known as LZ4. It can upgrade the performance of any site hosted in a shared hosting account on our end since not only does it compress data much better than algorithms used by alternative file systems, but it uncompresses data at speeds that are higher than the hard disk reading speeds. This is achieved by using a lot of CPU processing time, that is not a problem for our platform for the reason that it uses clusters of powerful servers working together. One more advantage of LZ4 is that it enables us to make backups more rapidly and on less disk space, so we will have a couple of daily backups of your files and databases and their generation will not change the performance of the servers. This way, we could always recover all content that you could have removed by mistake.

Data Compression in Semi-dedicated Servers

If you host your websites in a semi-dedicated server account from our firm, you'll be able to experience the advantages of LZ4 - the powerful compression algorithm used by the ZFS file system that's behind our advanced cloud hosting platform. What distinguishes LZ4 from all the other algorithms out there is that it has a better compression ratio and it is much faster, especially when it comes to uncompressing website content. It does that even quicker than uncompressed info can be read from a hard drive, so your sites will perform faster. The higher speed is at the expense of using a considerable amount of CPU processing time, which is not a problem for our platform since it consists of a lot of clusters working together. In combination with the improved performance, you will also have multiple daily backup copies at your disposal, so you'll be able to restore any deleted content with a few clicks. The backup copies are available for a whole month and we can afford to store them because they need a lot less space compared to ordinary backups.