Data compression is the compacting of info by lowering the number of bits that are stored or transmitted. In this way, the compressed information requires much less disk space than the original one, so a lot more content can be stored on identical amount of space. You'll find different compression algorithms which work in different ways and with many of them just the redundant bits are removed, so once the info is uncompressed, there is no loss of quality. Others remove unneeded bits, but uncompressing the data afterwards will lead to reduced quality in comparison with the original. Compressing and uncompressing content consumes a significant amount of system resources, especially CPU processing time, therefore every hosting platform that employs compression in real time needs to have enough power to support this attribute. An example how data can be compressed is to replace a binary code such as 111111 with 6x1 i.e. "remembering" how many sequential 1s or 0s there should be instead of saving the entire code.

Data Compression in Cloud Hosting

The compression algorithm which we work with on the cloud hosting platform where your new cloud hosting account shall be created is named LZ4 and it's used by the revolutionary ZFS file system that powers the system. The algorithm is superior to the ones other file systems use since its compression ratio is higher and it processes data significantly faster. The speed is most noticeable when content is being uncompressed since this happens faster than info can be read from a hard drive. Because of this, LZ4 improves the performance of any Internet site stored on a server which uses the algorithm. We use LZ4 in an additional way - its speed and compression ratio allow us to make multiple daily backup copies of the entire content of all accounts and store them for one month. Not only do our backup copies take less space, but also their generation won't slow the servers down like it often happens with other file systems.

Data Compression in Semi-dedicated Hosting

The ZFS file system that runs on the cloud platform where your semi-dedicated hosting account will be created uses a powerful compression algorithm called LZ4. It's one of the best algorithms out there and certainly the best one when it comes to compressing and uncompressing website content, as its ratio is very high and it will uncompress data at a higher speed than the same data can be read from a hard disk drive if it were uncompressed. Thus, using LZ4 will boost every Internet site that runs on a platform where the algorithm is enabled. This high performance requires lots of CPU processing time, that is provided by the multitude of clusters working together as a part of our platform. In addition to that, LZ4 makes it possible for us to generate several backup copies of your content every day and have them for one month as they'll take a smaller amount of space than standard backups and will be created much quicker without loading the servers.