Data compression is the compacting of information by decreasing the number of bits that are stored or transmitted. As a result, the compressed info will take much less disk space than the initial one, so much more content could be stored on the same amount of space. There are many different compression algorithms which function in different ways and with a lot of them only the redundant bits are removed, therefore once the information is uncompressed, there's no loss of quality. Others erase excessive bits, but uncompressing the data at a later time will result in lower quality compared to the original. Compressing and uncompressing content consumes a huge amount of system resources, and in particular CPU processing time, so any Internet hosting platform which employs compression in real time must have ample power to support that feature. An example how information can be compressed is to replace a binary code such as 111111 with 6x1 i.e. "remembering" how many sequential 1s or 0s there should be instead of keeping the actual code.

Data Compression in Cloud Website Hosting

The compression algorithm that we work with on the cloud web hosting platform where your new cloud website hosting account shall be created is named LZ4 and it is used by the exceptional ZFS file system which powers the platform. The algorithm is greater than the ones other file systems employ because its compression ratio is higher and it processes data a lot quicker. The speed is most noticeable when content is being uncompressed since this happens at a faster rate than data can be read from a hard disk. Because of this, LZ4 improves the performance of each website hosted on a server which uses the algorithm. We take full advantage of LZ4 in one more way - its speed and compression ratio allow us to make multiple daily backup copies of the entire content of all accounts and store them for a month. Not only do our backups take less space, but in addition their generation does not slow the servers down like it often happens with many other file systems.

Data Compression in Semi-dedicated Servers

In case you host your sites in a semi-dedicated server account from 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 web hosting platform. What distinguishes LZ4 from all the other algorithms out there is that it has an improved compression ratio and it is much quicker, particularly with regard to uncompressing website content. It does that even quicker than uncompressed information can be read from a hard disk drive, so your websites will perform faster. The higher speed is at the expense of using plenty of CPU processing time, which is not a problem for our platform because it consists of a lot of clusters working together. Along with the improved performance, you will also have multiple daily backups at your disposal, so you could restore any deleted content with just a few clicks. The backups are available for an entire month and we can afford to keep them as they need considerably less space compared to standard backups.