Data compression is the compacting of information by decreasing the number of bits that are stored or transmitted. This way, the compressed data will require less disk space than the initial one, so additional content can be stored using the same amount of space. You'll find various compression algorithms which function in different ways and with some of them only the redundant bits are erased, which means that once the info is uncompressed, there's no loss of quality. Others erase unneeded bits, but uncompressing the data at a later time will result in reduced quality compared to the original. Compressing and uncompressing content consumes a huge amount of system resources, particularly CPU processing time, therefore each and every Internet hosting platform which employs compression in real time should have ample power to support this feature. An example how info can be compressed is to substitute a binary code such as 111111 with 6x1 i.e. "remembering" what number of consecutive 1s or 0s there should be instead of saving the entire code.
Data Compression in Cloud Hosting
The compression algorithm that we employ on the cloud web hosting platform where your new cloud hosting account shall be created is named LZ4 and it is used by the exceptional ZFS file system which powers the system. The algorithm is superior to the ones other file systems work with since its compression ratio is a lot 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 drive. Because of this, LZ4 improves the performance of every Internet site hosted on a server that uses the algorithm. We take full advantage of LZ4 in one more way - its speed and compression ratio allow us to generate several daily backup copies of the whole content of all accounts and keep them for a month. Not only do these backup copies take less space, but also their generation does not slow the servers down like it can often happen with other file systems.
Data Compression in Semi-dedicated Hosting
If you host your Internet sites in a semi-dedicated hosting account with our firm, you can experience the advantages of LZ4 - the powerful compression algorithm used by the ZFS file system that's behind our advanced cloud Internet hosting platform. What differentiates LZ4 from all other algorithms out there is that it has an improved compression ratio and it is much faster, particularly with regard to uncompressing web content. It does that even quicker than uncompressed data can be read from a hard disk drive, so your sites will perform better. The higher speed comes at the expense of using a considerable amount of CPU processing time, which is not a problem for our platform as it consists of multiple clusters working together. In combination with the better performance, you'll have multiple daily backups at your disposal, so you can recover any deleted content with several clicks. The backups are available for an entire month and we can afford to keep them because they need considerably less space compared to conventional backups.