Data compression is the decrease of the number of bits that need to be saved or transmitted and this particular process is quite important in the web hosting field due to the fact that data stored on hard disks is generally compressed to take less space. There are different algorithms for compressing information and they provide different effectiveness based on the content. A lot of them remove only the redundant bits, so no data can be lost, while others delete unnecessary bits, which leads to worse quality when your data is uncompressed. The process uses plenty of processing time, so an internet hosting server has to be powerful enough to be able to compress and uncompress data right away. An illustration how binary code can be compressed is by "remembering" that there are five sequential 1s, for example, in contrast to storing all five 1s.

Data Compression in Website Hosting

The compression algorithm that we use on the cloud hosting platform where your new website hosting account shall be created is known as LZ4 and it is applied by the leading-edge ZFS file system that powers the platform. The algorithm is greater than the ones other file systems use as its compression ratio is much higher and it processes data significantly faster. The speed is most noticeable when content is being uncompressed as this happens more quickly than data can be read from a hard disk drive. Because of this, LZ4 improves the performance of any Internet site hosted on a server that uses the algorithm. We take advantage of LZ4 in an additional way - its speed and compression ratio let us make multiple daily backups of the whole content of all accounts and store them for a month. Not only do the backup copies take less space, but their generation won't slow the servers down like it can often happen with other file systems.

Data Compression in Semi-dedicated Hosting

If you host your sites in a semi-dedicated hosting account with our firm, you can experience the advantages of LZ4 - the powerful compression algorithm used by the ZFS file system which is behind our advanced cloud hosting platform. What separates LZ4 from all of the other algorithms out there is that it has a higher compression ratio and it is much faster, particularly with regard to uncompressing website content. It does that even faster than uncompressed info can be read from a hard disk drive, so your Internet sites will perform faster. The higher speed is at the expense of using plenty of CPU processing time, which is not a problem for our platform because it consists of a lot of clusters working together. In combination with the improved performance, you'll also have multiple daily backup copies at your disposal, so you could restore any deleted content with a couple of clicks. The backup copies are available for an entire month and we can afford to keep them as they take a lot less space compared to standard backups.