Data compression is the compacting of info by lowering the number of bits which are stored or transmitted. Thus, the compressed information will require less disk space than the original one, so extra content might be stored on identical amount of space. You'll find many different compression algorithms that function in different ways and with some of them just the redundant bits are deleted, therefore once the info is uncompressed, there's no decrease in quality. Others delete unneeded bits, but uncompressing the data afterwards will lead to lower quality in comparison with the original. Compressing and uncompressing content consumes a significant amount of system resources, in particular CPU processing time, therefore each and every Internet hosting platform that uses compression in real time must have enough 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" what number of sequential 1s or 0s there should be instead of storing the whole code.
Data Compression in Shared Web Hosting
The compression algorithm which we employ on the cloud internet hosting platform where your new shared web hosting account shall be created is called LZ4 and it is applied by the leading-edge ZFS file system which powers the platform. The algorithm is better than the ones other file systems work with since its compression ratio is much higher and it processes data a lot faster. 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 drive. Consequently, LZ4 improves the performance of each and every Internet site hosted on a server that uses this particular algorithm. We use LZ4 in an additional way - its speed and compression ratio make it possible for us to make a couple of daily backups of the entire content of all accounts and keep them for one month. Not only do the backups take less space, but their generation doesn't slow the servers down like it can often happen with other file systems.
Data Compression in Semi-dedicated Hosting
The ZFS file system which runs on the cloud platform where your semi-dedicated hosting account will be created uses a powerful compression algorithm called LZ4. It is one of the best algorithms out there and certainly the best one when it comes to compressing and uncompressing website content, as its ratio is very high and it'll uncompress data at a faster rate than the same data can be read from a hard disk drive if it were uncompressed. This way, using LZ4 will boost any kind of Internet site that runs on a platform where this algorithm is present. This high performance requires a lot of CPU processing time, which is provided by the numerous clusters working together as part of our platform. What's more, LZ4 enables us to generate several backup copies of your content every day and save them for a month as they'll take much less space than regular backups and will be generated considerably quicker without loading the servers.