Data compression is the decrease of the number of bits which need to be saved or transmitted and this process is really important in the internet hosting field as data stored on HDDs is generally compressed so as to take less space. You will find various algorithms for compressing data and they have different effectiveness based on the content. A lot of them remove only the redundant bits, so no data will be lost, while others delete unneeded bits, which results in worse quality once the data is uncompressed. This process requires plenty of processing time, so an internet hosting server has to be powerful enough to be able to compress and uncompress data instantly. One example how binary code may be compressed is by "remembering" that there are five sequential 1s, for example, as an alternative to storing all five 1s.
Data Compression in Shared Website Hosting
The compression algorithm employed by the ZFS file system which runs on our cloud hosting platform is named LZ4. It can boost the performance of any site hosted in a shared website hosting account with us because not only does it compress data more efficiently than algorithms employed by other file systems, but also uncompresses data at speeds which are higher than the hard drive reading speeds. This can be done by using a great deal of CPU processing time, that is not a problem for our platform owing to the fact that it uses clusters of powerful servers working together. One more advantage of LZ4 is that it enables us to make backup copies more rapidly and on lower disk space, so we shall have a couple of daily backups of your files and databases and their generation won't affect the performance of the servers. This way, we can always restore any kind of content that you may have erased by accident.
Data Compression in Semi-dedicated Servers
In case you host your websites in a semi-dedicated server account with our company, you can experience the advantages of LZ4 - the powerful compression algorithm used by the ZFS file system that's behind our advanced cloud web hosting platform. What differentiates LZ4 from all the other algorithms out there is that it has a higher compression ratio and it is much faster, especially when it comes to uncompressing website content. It does that even quicker 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 great deal of CPU processing time, which is not an issue for our platform as it consists of numerous clusters working together. In addition to the improved performance, you'll have multiple daily backup copies at your disposal, so you could restore any deleted content with several clicks. The backup copies are available for an entire month and we can afford to keep them as they need a lot less space compared to standard backups.