Data compression is the compacting of info by decreasing the number of bits which are stored or transmitted. Because of this, the compressed data requires much less disk space than the original one, so additional content might be stored using the same amount of space. There are various compression algorithms which function in different ways and with several of them only the redundant bits are erased, therefore once the data is uncompressed, there is no decrease in quality. Others delete unnecessary bits, but uncompressing the data subsequently will result in lower quality in comparison with the original. Compressing and uncompressing content needs a large amount of system resources, particularly CPU processing time, so every hosting platform which employs compression in real time needs to have enough power to support this attribute. An example how information 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 saving the actual code.

Data Compression in Shared Web Hosting

The compression algorithm that we use on the cloud hosting platform where your new shared web hosting account shall be created is known as LZ4 and it's used by the advanced ZFS file system which powers the platform. The algorithm is greater than the ones other file systems use as its compression ratio is a lot higher and it processes data considerably quicker. The speed is most noticeable when content is being uncompressed since this happens quicker than data can be read from a hard disk. For that reason, LZ4 improves the performance of any Internet site stored on a server which uses this particular algorithm. We take advantage of LZ4 in one more way - its speed and compression ratio let us produce a couple of daily backup copies of the full content of all accounts and keep them for one month. Not only do the backup copies take less space, but their generation doesn't slow the servers down like it can often happen with other file systems.

Data Compression in Semi-dedicated Servers

Your semi-dedicated server account shall be created on a cloud platform which is run on the advanced ZFS file system. The aforementioned uses a compression algorithm called LZ4, which is much better than alternative algorithms regarding compression ratio and speed. The gain is apparent particularly when data is being uncompressed and not only is LZ4 much faster than other algorithms, but it is also faster in uncompressing data than a system is in reading from a hard disk drive. This is the reason why sites running on a platform that employs LZ4 compression perform faster since 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 that we keep require significantly less space and they are generated faster, which enables us to have multiple daily backups of all your files and databases.