Data compression is the reduction of the number of bits which should be saved or transmitted and this particular process is really important in the internet hosting field as information recorded on hard disk drives is generally compressed so as to take less space. You will find different algorithms for compressing information and they provide different efficiency depending on the content. Many of them remove just the redundant bits, so that no data will be lost, while others delete unneeded bits, which leads to worse quality when your data is uncompressed. This process uses plenty of processing time, therefore an internet hosting server has to be powerful enough in order to be able to compress and uncompress data instantly. An instance how binary code may be compressed is by "remembering" that there're five consecutive 1s, for example, as an alternative to storing all five 1s.
Data Compression in Web Hosting
The compression algorithm which we work with on the cloud hosting platform where your new web hosting account will be created is known as LZ4 and it is applied by the leading-edge ZFS file system which powers the system. The algorithm is superior to the ones other file systems employ as its compression ratio is much higher and it processes data significantly quicker. The speed is most noticeable when content is being uncompressed as this happens faster than data can be read from a hard disk. Because of this, LZ4 improves the performance of each and every Internet site stored on a server that uses this algorithm. We use LZ4 in one more way - its speed and compression ratio allow us to generate several daily backup copies of the entire content of all accounts and store them for 30 days. Not only do the backups take less space, but their generation doesn't slow the servers down like it often happens with alternative file systems.
Data Compression in Semi-dedicated Servers
In case you host your websites in a semi-dedicated server account from our company, you will be able to experience the advantages of LZ4 - the powerful compression algorithm used by the ZFS file system that's behind our advanced cloud Internet hosting platform. What distinguishes LZ4 from all of the other algorithms out there is that it has a better compression ratio and it is way quicker, particularly when it comes to uncompressing web content. It does that even faster than uncompressed info can be read from a hard drive, so your websites will perform better. The higher speed comes at the expense of using a considerable amount of CPU processing time, that's not an issue for our platform as it consists of multiple clusters working together. Together with the improved performance, you'll also have multiple daily backup copies at your disposal, so you could recover any deleted content with a couple of clicks. The backup copies are available for an entire month and we can afford to keep them since they need considerably less space compared to ordinary backups.