Data compression is the compacting of information by lowering the number of bits that are stored or transmitted. This way, the compressed information takes much less disk space than the original one, so more content could be stored using identical amount of space. There're various compression algorithms which function in different ways and with some of them just the redundant bits are erased, which means that once the information is uncompressed, there is no decrease in quality. Others remove unnecessary bits, but uncompressing the data at a later time will result in reduced quality in comparison with the original. Compressing and uncompressing content needs a large amount of system resources, and in particular CPU processing time, therefore every web hosting platform which employs compression in real time should have adequate power to support this feature. An example how information can be compressed is to replace a binary code such as 111111 with 6x1 i.e. "remembering" what number of sequential 1s or 0s there should be instead of storing the actual code.

Data Compression in Hosting

The compression algorithm employed by the ZFS file system that runs on our cloud web hosting platform is called LZ4. It can supercharge the performance of any site hosted in a hosting account on our end since not only does it compress data more efficiently than algorithms used by other file systems, but also uncompresses data at speeds which are higher than the HDD reading speeds. This is achieved 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. One more advantage of LZ4 is that it allows us to make backup copies quicker and on lower disk space, so we will have several daily backups of your databases and files and their generation will not affect the performance of the servers. That way, we can always restore any content that you could have erased by mistake.

Data Compression in Semi-dedicated Hosting

In case you host your sites in a semi-dedicated hosting account from our company, you will be able to experience the advantages of LZ4 - the powerful compression algorithm used by the ZFS file system which is behind our advanced cloud web hosting platform. What differentiates LZ4 from all of the other algorithms out there is that it has an improved compression ratio and it is way quicker, particularly when it comes to uncompressing web content. It does that even quicker than uncompressed info can be read from a hard disk drive, so your Internet sites will perform better. The higher speed comes at the expense of using plenty of CPU processing time, that's not an issue for our platform since it consists of a large number of clusters working together. Besides the superior performance, you will also have multiple daily backups at your disposal, so you will be able to restore any deleted content with just a few clicks. The backups are available for an entire month and we can afford to keep them since they take considerably less space compared to conventional backups.