Data compression is the compacting of data by reducing the number of bits which are stored or transmitted. Thus, the compressed information will need substantially less disk space than the initial one, so extra content can be stored on identical amount of space. There are many different compression algorithms that function in different ways and with some of them only the redundant bits are removed, so once the info is uncompressed, there's no decrease in quality. Others remove unnecessary bits, but uncompressing the data later on will lead to reduced quality in comparison with the original. Compressing and uncompressing content takes a huge amount of system resources, in particular CPU processing time, therefore every hosting platform which 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" the number of sequential 1s or 0s there should be instead of storing the entire code.
Data Compression in Cloud Website Hosting
The compression algorithm that we employ on the cloud web hosting platform where your new cloud website hosting account will be created is known as LZ4 and it is used by the leading-edge ZFS file system which powers the platform. The algorithm is superior to the ones other file systems employ as its compression ratio is higher and it processes data considerably faster. 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. Therefore, LZ4 improves the performance of each website located on a server which uses this particular algorithm. We use LZ4 in an additional way - its speed and compression ratio let us generate a couple of daily backup copies of the whole content of all accounts and keep them for one month. Not only do our backup copies take less space, but in addition their generation does not slow the servers down like it often happens with many other file systems.
Data Compression in Semi-dedicated Servers
Your semi-dedicated server account will be created on a cloud platform that is run on the leading-edge ZFS file system. The aforementioned uses a compression algorithm known as LZ4, that's a lot better than various other algorithms when it comes to compression ratio and speed. The gain is significant particularly when data is being uncompressed and not only is LZ4 a lot faster than other algorithms, but it is also quicker in uncompressing data than a system is in reading from a HDD. That is why sites running on a platform that employs LZ4 compression perform faster as the algorithm is most efficient when it processes compressible data i.e. website content. An additional advantage of using LZ4 is that the backups of the semi-dedicated accounts which we keep need much less space and they are generated a lot faster, which enables us to keep several daily backups of your files and databases.