Data compression is the lowering of the number of bits which should be saved or transmitted and this process is very important in the web hosting field since data stored on hard disks is generally compressed so as to take less space. There are many different algorithms for compressing information and they have different efficiency based on the content. Some of them remove only the redundant bits, so no data will be lost, while others delete unneeded bits, which leads to worse quality when the data is uncompressed. The method uses plenty of processing time, which means that a hosting server needs to be powerful enough so as to be able to compress and uncompress data instantly. One example how binary code may be compressed is by "remembering" that there're five sequential 1s, for example, as an alternative to storing all five 1s.

Data Compression in Hosting

The compression algorithm employed by the ZFS file system which runs on our cloud web hosting platform is known as LZ4. It can enhance the performance of any site hosted in a hosting account with us because not only does it compress data more effectively than algorithms employed by other file systems, but it 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 due to the fact that it uses clusters of powerful servers working together. An additional advantage of LZ4 is that it allows us to create backup copies more quickly and on reduced disk space, so we will have several daily backups of your files and databases and their generation will not change the performance of the servers. That way, we can always recover all the content that you could have erased by mistake.

Data Compression in Semi-dedicated Servers

Your semi-dedicated server account shall be created on a cloud platform which runs using the innovative ZFS file system. The latter uses a compression algorithm known as LZ4, that's a lot better than all other algorithms regarding compression ratio and speed. The gain is apparent especially when data is being uncompressed and not only is LZ4 quicker than other algorithms, but it is also quicker in uncompressing data than a system is in reading from a hard disk. That's why Internet sites running on a platform which employs LZ4 compression perform faster as the algorithm is most effective when it processes compressible data i.e. site content. Another advantage of using LZ4 is that the backup copies of the semi-dedicated accounts that we keep require much less space and they're generated a lot quicker, which allows us to store several daily backups of your files and databases.