Data compression is the reduction of the number of bits that have to be stored or transmitted and this particular process is rather important in the web hosting field since information located on HDDs is generally compressed to take less space. There're many different algorithms for compressing information and they provide different effectiveness based on the content. A lot of them remove just the redundant bits, so no data can be lost, while others remove unnecessary bits, which results in worse quality once your data is uncompressed. The process uses plenty of processing time, so a hosting server needs to be powerful enough in order to be able to compress and uncompress data immediately. One example how binary code can be compressed is by "remembering" that there are five consecutive 1s, for example, rather than storing all five 1s.

Data Compression in Website Hosting

The compression algorithm that we work with on the cloud web hosting platform where your new website hosting account shall be created is known as LZ4 and it is used by the leading-edge ZFS file system that powers the system. The algorithm is superior to the ones other file systems employ since its compression ratio is a lot higher and it processes data considerably quicker. The speed is most noticeable when content is being uncompressed as this happens quicker than information can be read from a hdd. Therefore, LZ4 improves the performance of any site located on a server which uses the algorithm. We use LZ4 in an additional way - its speed and compression ratio let us generate several daily backup copies of the full content of all accounts and store them for a month. Not only do our backup copies take less space, but their generation will not slow the servers down like it can often happen with some other file systems.

Data Compression in Semi-dedicated Hosting

Your semi-dedicated hosting account will be created on a cloud platform that runs using the advanced ZFS file system. The aforementioned uses a compression algorithm called LZ4, which is a lot better than various other algorithms with regard to compression ratio and speed. The gain is noticeable especially when data is being uncompressed and not only is LZ4 faster than other algorithms, but it is also faster in uncompressing data than a system is in reading from a HDD. That is why websites running on a platform that employs LZ4 compression perform better as the algorithm is most efficient when it processes compressible data i.e. site content. Another advantage of using LZ4 is that the backup copies of the semi-dedicated accounts which we keep require a lot less space and are generated faster, which enables us to keep multiple daily backups of your files and databases.