Data compression is the reduction of the number of bits which need to be saved or transmitted and the process is really important in the web hosting field as info filed on HDDs is typically compressed so as to take less space. You will find many different algorithms for compressing data and they have different effectiveness based on the content. Some of them remove just the redundant bits, so that no data can be lost, while others remove unneeded bits, which results in worse quality once your data is uncompressed. This method needs a lot of processing time, therefore an internet hosting server needs to be powerful enough to be able to compress and uncompress data in real time. One example how binary code could be compressed is by "remembering" that there're five consecutive 1s, for example, in contrast to storing all five 1s.

Data Compression in Cloud Website Hosting

The compression algorithm which we employ on the cloud web hosting platform where your new cloud website hosting account will be created is called LZ4 and it's used by the advanced ZFS file system that powers the system. The algorithm is far better than the ones other file systems use because its compression ratio is higher and it processes data a lot faster. The speed is most noticeable when content is being uncompressed as this happens faster than information can be read from a hard disk. For that reason, LZ4 improves the performance of every website located on a server that uses this algorithm. We take full advantage of LZ4 in an additional way - its speed and compression ratio make it possible for us to make a number of daily backups of the entire content of all accounts and keep them for one month. Not only do these backups take less space, but their generation will not slow the servers down like it often happens with other file systems.

Data Compression in Semi-dedicated Servers

In case you host your Internet sites in a semi-dedicated server account from our firm, you will be able to experience the advantages of LZ4 - the powerful compression algorithm used by the ZFS file system that is behind our advanced cloud hosting platform. What separates LZ4 from all the other algorithms out there is that it has a higher compression ratio and it is considerably quicker, particularly with regard to uncompressing web content. It does that even quicker than uncompressed data can be read from a hard drive, so your sites will perform better. The higher speed comes at the expense of using plenty of CPU processing time, that is not an issue for our platform since it consists of numerous clusters working together. Together with the improved performance, you will also have multiple daily backups at your disposal, so you will be able to restore any deleted content with just a couple of clicks. The backup copies are available for a whole month and we can afford to keep them since they take a lot less space compared to conventional backups.