Data compression is the compacting of information by lowering the number of bits that are stored or transmitted. Thus, the compressed info will take less disk space than the original one, so a lot more content can be stored on the same amount of space. You'll find different compression algorithms that function in different ways and with a number of them only the redundant bits are deleted, so once the info is uncompressed, there is no loss of quality. Others delete unneeded bits, but uncompressing the data following that will result in reduced quality compared to the original. Compressing and uncompressing content takes a large amount of system resources, and in particular CPU processing time, therefore each and every web hosting platform which employs compression in real time needs to have ample power to support that attribute. An example how information can be compressed is to replace a binary code such as 111111 with 6x1 i.e. "remembering" the number of consecutive 1s or 0s there should be instead of storing the actual code.
Data Compression in Cloud Web Hosting
The compression algorithm used by the ZFS file system that runs on our cloud internet hosting platform is known as LZ4. It can supercharge the performance of any website hosted in a cloud web hosting account on our end since not only does it compress data more efficiently than algorithms used by various other file systems, but it also uncompresses data at speeds which are higher than the hard disk reading speeds. This can be done by using a lot of CPU processing time, that is not a problem for our platform owing to the fact that it uses clusters of powerful servers working together. A further advantage of LZ4 is that it allows us to generate backups quicker and on less disk space, so we will have multiple daily backups of your databases and files and their generation will not change the performance of the servers. This way, we could always restore the content that you may have removed by accident.
Data Compression in Semi-dedicated Hosting
Your semi-dedicated hosting account will be created on a cloud platform that runs using the advanced ZFS file system. The aforementioned uses a compression algorithm called LZ4, that is a lot better than all the other algorithms regarding compression ratio and speed. The gain is visible 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 HDD. This is the reason why sites running on a platform which employs LZ4 compression perform better because the algorithm is most efficient when it processes compressible data i.e. website content. An additional advantage of using LZ4 is that the backups of the semi-dedicated accounts which we keep require much less space and they're generated a lot faster, which enables us to keep multiple daily backups of your files and databases.