Data compression is the reduction of the number of bits that should be stored or transmitted and this process is rather important in the internet hosting field since information located on hard disk drives is usually compressed in order to take less space. You will find different algorithms for compressing info and they provide different effectiveness based on the content. A lot of them remove only the redundant bits, so that no data can be lost, while others delete unneeded bits, which results in worse quality once the data is uncompressed. The method requires plenty of processing time, therefore an internet hosting server needs to be powerful enough to be able to compress and uncompress data quickly. An instance how binary code can be compressed is by "remembering" that there're five sequential 1s, for example, rather than storing all five 1s.
Data Compression in Cloud Web Hosting
The compression algorithm that we work with on the cloud internet hosting platform where your new cloud web hosting account will be created is named LZ4 and it is applied by the state-of-the-art ZFS file system that powers the system. The algorithm is greater than the ones other file systems work with as its compression ratio is much higher and it processes data significantly faster. The speed is most noticeable when content is being uncompressed as this happens more quickly than data can be read from a hard disk. Therefore, LZ4 improves the performance of each Internet site stored on a server which uses the algorithm. We take full advantage of LZ4 in an additional way - its speed and compression ratio let us generate a couple of daily backup copies of the entire content of all accounts and store them for a month. Not only do the backup copies take less space, but in addition their generation won't slow the servers down like it can often happen with alternative file systems.
Data Compression in Semi-dedicated Hosting
Your semi-dedicated hosting account will be created on a cloud platform that runs on the advanced ZFS file system. The latter uses a compression algorithm named LZ4, that's much better than all other algorithms with regard to compression ratio and speed. The gain is noticeable particularly when data is being uncompressed and not only is LZ4 much faster than other algorithms, but it is also faster in uncompressing data than a system is in reading from a hard disk drive. Because of this sites running on a platform that uses LZ4 compression perform better because the algorithm is most efficient when it processes compressible data i.e. site content. One more advantage of using LZ4 is that the backup copies of the semi-dedicated accounts which we keep require less space and they're generated a lot faster, which enables us to have a couple of daily backups of all your files and databases.