Data compression is the compacting of data by lowering the number of bits that are stored or transmitted. Thus, the compressed data will take much less disk space than the original one, so extra content might be stored using identical amount of space. There're many different compression algorithms that function in different ways and with a lot of them only the redundant bits are erased, therefore once the data is uncompressed, there's no decrease in quality. Others remove unneeded bits, but uncompressing the data later will result in lower quality compared to the original. Compressing and uncompressing content takes a significant amount of system resources, and in particular CPU processing time, therefore every Internet hosting platform which uses compression in real time should have enough power to support this attribute. An example how information can be compressed is to replace 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 whole code.

Data Compression in Cloud Hosting

The compression algorithm which we use on the cloud internet hosting platform where your new cloud hosting account will be created is known as LZ4 and it is applied by the cutting-edge ZFS file system which powers the platform. The algorithm is greater than the ones other file systems employ since 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 even faster than information can be read from a hard disk. As a result, LZ4 improves the performance of each website hosted on a server that uses the algorithm. We use LZ4 in one more way - its speed and compression ratio make it possible for us to generate a number of daily backups of the whole content of all accounts and store them for thirty days. Not only do our backups take less space, but in addition their generation does not slow the servers down like it often happens with many other file systems.

Data Compression in Semi-dedicated Hosting

Your semi-dedicated hosting account shall be created on a cloud platform that runs on the state-of-the-art ZFS file system. The latter uses a compression algorithm named LZ4, which is much better than all other 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 quicker in uncompressing data than a system is in reading from a HDD. This is the reason why websites running on a platform that employs LZ4 compression perform better because the algorithm is most effective when it processes compressible data i.e. site content. Another advantage of using LZ4 is that the backup copies of the semi-dedicated accounts which we keep take much less space and they are generated faster, which allows us to have multiple daily backups of all your files and databases.