Data compression is the decrease of the number of bits that should be stored or transmitted and the process is very important in the web hosting field as data recorded on hard drives is usually compressed so as to take less space. You will find various algorithms for compressing information and they provide different efficiency based on the content. Many of them remove only the redundant bits, so no data will be lost, while others erase unnecessary bits, which leads to worse quality when your data is uncompressed. The method requires plenty of processing time, therefore a web hosting server has to be powerful enough so as to be able to compress and uncompress data immediately. An example how binary code could be compressed is by "remembering" that there're five sequential 1s, for example, in contrast to storing all five 1s.
Data Compression in Website Hosting
The compression algorithm which we use on the cloud web hosting platform where your new website hosting account shall be created is known as LZ4 and it's used by the cutting-edge ZFS file system which powers the platform. The algorithm is much better than the ones other file systems work with as its compression ratio is a lot higher and it processes data significantly quicker. The speed is most noticeable when content is being uncompressed as this happens at a faster rate than info can be read from a hard disk drive. For that reason, LZ4 improves the performance of each and every site stored on a server which uses this algorithm. We use LZ4 in one more way - its speed and compression ratio let us produce a couple of daily backups of the full content of all accounts and store them for 30 days. Not only do the backup copies take less space, but in addition their generation will not slow the servers down like it often happens with some other file systems.
Data Compression in Semi-dedicated Servers
The ZFS file system which runs on the cloud platform where your semi-dedicated server account will be created uses a powerful compression algorithm called LZ4. It is one of the best algorithms out there and definitely the best one when it comes to compressing and uncompressing website content, as its ratio is very high and it can uncompress data quicker than the same data can be read from a hard disk drive if it were uncompressed. In this way, using LZ4 will accelerate every site that runs on a platform where this algorithm is enabled. The high performance requires lots of CPU processing time, which is provided by the great number of clusters working together as part of our platform. Furthermore, LZ4 enables us to generate several backups of your content every day and keep them for a month as they'll take a reduced amount of space than typical backups and will be generated much quicker without loading the servers.