The term data compression describes decreasing the number of bits of info that should be saved or transmitted. This can be done with or without losing information, so what will be erased during the compression can be either redundant data or unneeded one. When the data is uncompressed subsequently, in the first case the info and its quality shall be identical, whereas in the second case the quality shall be worse. You will find various compression algorithms that are better for various kind of information. Compressing and uncompressing data generally takes plenty of processing time, which means that the server carrying out the action needs to have enough resources to be able to process your info fast enough. An example how information can be compressed is to store how many sequential positions should have 1 and how many should have 0 inside the binary code rather than storing the particular 1s and 0s.

Data Compression in Web Hosting

The compression algorithm that we employ on the cloud internet hosting platform where your new web hosting account will be created is called LZ4 and it is used by the revolutionary ZFS file system which powers the system. The algorithm is far better than the ones other file systems employ because its compression ratio is much higher and it processes data considerably quicker. The speed is most noticeable when content is being uncompressed as this happens at a faster rate than data can be read from a hard drive. For that reason, LZ4 improves the performance of each and every site stored on a server that uses the algorithm. We use LZ4 in an additional way - its speed and compression ratio allow us to generate several daily backups of the entire content of all accounts and store them for 30 days. Not only do the backups take less space, but also their generation won't slow the servers down like it often happens with alternative file systems.

Data Compression in Semi-dedicated Servers

The ZFS file system that runs on the cloud platform where your semi-dedicated server account will be created uses a powerful compression algorithm called LZ4. It is among the best algorithms out there and definitely the most efficient one when it comes to compressing and uncompressing website content, as its ratio is very high and it can uncompress data a lot faster than the same data can be read from a hard drive if it were uncompressed. That way, using LZ4 will accelerate every site that runs on a platform where the algorithm is enabled. The high performance requires a lot of CPU processing time, which is provided by the multitude of clusters working together as a part of our platform. In addition, LZ4 enables us to generate several backup copies of your content every day and keep them for one month as they will take a smaller amount of space than standard backups and will be generated much quicker without loading the servers.