Data compression is the compacting of information by reducing the number of bits that are stored or transmitted. Because of this, the compressed info will require less disk space than the original one, so a lot more content can be stored using the same amount of space. There're many different compression algorithms that function in different ways and with several of them only the redundant bits are erased, so once the information is uncompressed, there is no loss of quality. Others erase excessive bits, but uncompressing the data later will lead to lower quality compared to the original. Compressing and uncompressing content needs a huge amount of system resources, in particular CPU processing time, therefore every Internet hosting platform which employs compression in real time must have ample power to support this feature. An example how information can be compressed is to replace a binary code such as 111111 with 6x1 i.e. "remembering" what number of consecutive 1s or 0s there should be instead of saving the whole code.

Data Compression in Shared Website Hosting

The compression algorithm which we use on the cloud web hosting platform where your new shared website hosting account will be created is called LZ4 and it's used by the cutting-edge ZFS file system that powers the system. The algorithm is greater than the ones other file systems work with as its compression ratio is a lot higher and it processes data significantly faster. The speed is most noticeable when content is being uncompressed as this happens faster than info can be read from a hard drive. For that reason, LZ4 improves the performance of every site stored on a server that uses this particular algorithm. We take advantage of LZ4 in an additional way - its speed and compression ratio let us produce several daily backup copies of the whole content of all accounts and store them for one month. Not only do the backup copies take less space, but also their generation won't slow the servers down like it can often happen with some other file systems.

Data Compression in Semi-dedicated Servers

In case you host your websites in a semi-dedicated server account with our firm, you'll 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 higher compression ratio and it is much faster, particularly when it comes to uncompressing website content. It does that even faster than uncompressed information can be read from a hard disk drive, so your sites will perform better. The higher speed is at the expense of using lots of CPU processing time, which is not a problem for our platform because it consists of multiple clusters working together. Together with the improved performance, you'll also have multiple daily backups at your disposal, so you'll be able to restore any deleted content with a few clicks. The backups are available for an entire month and we can afford to keep them since they need considerably less space compared to traditional backups.