Data compression is the compacting of data by reducing the number of bits which are stored or transmitted. As a result, the compressed information requires less disk space than the original one, so extra content could be stored on identical amount of space. You can find different compression algorithms that function in different ways and with several of them just the redundant bits are erased, which means that once the info is uncompressed, there is no loss of quality. Others delete unnecessary bits, but uncompressing the data subsequently will result in lower quality compared to the original. Compressing and uncompressing content needs a large amount of system resources, particularly CPU processing time, so every hosting platform that uses compression in real time needs to have enough power to support that attribute. An example how information can be compressed is to substitute a binary code such as 111111 with 6x1 i.e. "remembering" how many consecutive 1s or 0s there should be instead of storing the actual code.

Data Compression in Hosting

The compression algorithm used by the ZFS file system that runs on our cloud hosting platform is known as LZ4. It can boost the performance of any site hosted in a hosting account with us since not only does it compress data more efficiently than algorithms used by various other file systems, but also uncompresses data at speeds that are higher than the hard disk drive reading speeds. This can be done by using a lot of CPU processing time, that is not a problem for our platform for the reason that it uses clusters of powerful servers working together. A further advantage of LZ4 is that it enables us to generate backups more speedily and on reduced disk space, so we will have a couple of daily backups of your files and databases and their generation won't change the performance of the servers. That way, we could always recover the content that you may have erased by accident.

Data Compression in Semi-dedicated Servers

If you host your websites in a semi-dedicated server account with our company, you can experience the advantages of LZ4 - the powerful compression algorithm used by the ZFS file system that's behind our advanced cloud hosting platform. What distinguishes LZ4 from all of the other algorithms out there is that it has a higher compression ratio and it is way quicker, in particular with regard to uncompressing website content. It does that even faster than uncompressed info can be read from a hard drive, so your websites will perform faster. The higher speed comes at the expense of using plenty of CPU processing time, which is not an issue for our platform since it consists of a large number of clusters working together. Along with the better performance, you'll have multiple daily backups at your disposal, so you'll be able to restore any deleted content with just a couple of clicks. The backup copies are available for an entire month and we can afford to store them because they need a lot less space than ordinary backups.