Data compression is the lowering of the number of bits which have to be saved or transmitted and this particular process is really important in the web hosting field due to the fact that info recorded on hard disk drives is usually compressed in order to take less space. You can find various algorithms for compressing info and they offer different efficiency based on the content. A number of them remove just the redundant bits, so no data will be lost, while others remove unnecessary bits, which results in worse quality once the data is uncompressed. The method employs plenty of processing time, so an internet hosting server needs to be powerful enough in order to be able to compress and uncompress data quickly. An instance how binary code can be compressed is by "remembering" that there're five consecutive 1s, for example, rather than storing all five 1s.

Data Compression in Shared Website Hosting

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

Data Compression in Semi-dedicated Hosting

Your semi-dedicated hosting account shall be created on a cloud platform that is run on the advanced ZFS file system. The aforementioned uses a compression algorithm known as LZ4, that is a lot better than all the other algorithms with regard to compression ratio and speed. The gain is apparent particularly when data is being uncompressed and not only is LZ4 a lot faster than other algorithms, but it is also faster in uncompressing data than a system is in reading from a hard disk drive. This is why sites running on a platform which uses LZ4 compression perform better as the algorithm is most effective when it processes compressible data i.e. website content. One more advantage of using LZ4 is that the backup copies of the semi-dedicated accounts that we keep take much less space and they're generated a lot faster, which allows us to keep several daily backups of all your files and databases.