Data compression is the compacting of info by reducing the number of bits that are stored or transmitted. Because of this, the compressed info will take less disk space than the original one, so a lot more content can be stored on identical amount of space. You'll find many different compression algorithms which work in different ways and with a lot of them just the redundant bits are erased, so once the information is uncompressed, there is no loss of quality. Others remove unnecessary bits, but uncompressing the data afterwards will result in reduced quality compared to the original. Compressing and uncompressing content needs a significant amount of system resources, and in particular CPU processing time, so any hosting platform which uses compression in real time needs to have enough power to support that attribute. An example how data can be compressed is to replace 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 whole code.

Data Compression in Cloud Hosting

The compression algorithm used by the ZFS file system that runs on our cloud hosting platform is known as LZ4. It can supercharge the performance of any site hosted in a cloud hosting account on our end as not only does it compress data much better than algorithms used by various other file systems, but also uncompresses data at speeds which are higher than the hard disk drive reading speeds. This can be done by using a lot of CPU processing time, which is not a problem for our platform since it uses clusters of powerful servers working together. A further advantage of LZ4 is that it allows us to generate backup copies quicker and on less disk space, so we shall have a couple of daily backups of your files and databases and their generation will not affect the performance of the servers. In this way, we could always restore any content that you may have removed by mistake.

Data Compression in Semi-dedicated Servers

In case 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 which is behind our advanced cloud hosting platform. What differentiates LZ4 from all other algorithms out there is that it has an improved compression ratio and it is much quicker, particularly when it comes to uncompressing web content. It does that even quicker than uncompressed information can be read from a hard disk drive, so your Internet sites will perform better. The higher speed comes at the expense of using plenty of CPU processing time, that is not a problem for our platform because it consists of numerous clusters working together. In addition to the better performance, you'll also have multiple daily backups at your disposal, so you'll be able to recover any deleted content with several clicks. The backups are available for a whole month and we can afford to store them since they take significantly less space compared to standard backups.