The term data compression refers to lowering the number of bits of information which should be saved or transmitted. This can be done with or without losing data, so what will be removed in the course of the compression will be either redundant data or unnecessary one. When the data is uncompressed later on, in the first case the content and the quality shall be the same, while in the second case the quality will be worse. There're different compression algorithms that are more efficient for different type of information. Compressing and uncompressing data normally takes a lot of processing time, therefore the server performing the action should have sufficient resources to be able to process the data fast enough. One simple example how information can be compressed is to store how many sequential positions should have 1 and just how many should have 0 in the binary code as an alternative to storing the actual 1s and 0s.

Data Compression in Web Hosting

The compression algorithm employed by the ZFS file system which runs on our cloud internet hosting platform is known as LZ4. It can boost the performance of any Internet site hosted in a web hosting account on our end since not only does it compress data more efficiently than algorithms employed by other file systems, but also uncompresses data at speeds which are higher than the hard disk drive reading speeds. This is achieved by using a great deal of CPU processing time, which is not a problem for our platform because it uses clusters of powerful servers working together. One more advantage of LZ4 is that it allows us to make backup copies faster and on reduced disk space, so we will have a couple of daily backups of your files and databases and their generation won't change the performance of the servers. This way, we could always recover any content that you may have removed by accident.

Data Compression in Semi-dedicated Servers

If you host your websites in a semi-dedicated server account with our company, you'll be able to experience the advantages of LZ4 - the powerful compression algorithm used by the ZFS file system that is behind our advanced cloud Internet hosting platform. What distinguishes LZ4 from all the other algorithms out there is that it has an improved compression ratio and it is way quicker, particularly when it comes to uncompressing website content. It does that even faster than uncompressed data can be read from a hard disk drive, so your sites will perform better. The higher speed comes at the expense of using plenty of CPU processing time, that's not an issue for our platform as it consists of a lot of clusters working together. Besides the better performance, you'll have multiple daily backup copies at your disposal, so you can recover any deleted content with a few clicks. The backup copies are available for a whole month and we can afford to store them as they take a lot less space compared to traditional backups.