Data compression is the compacting of data by decreasing the number of bits which are stored or transmitted. Because of this, the compressed data takes much less disk space than the original one, so extra content might be stored using identical amount of space. You can find different compression algorithms which function in different ways and with some of them only the redundant bits are removed, therefore once the data is uncompressed, there's no decrease in quality. Others erase unneeded bits, but uncompressing the data afterwards will lead to reduced quality in comparison with the original. Compressing and uncompressing content consumes a significant amount of system resources, in particular CPU processing time, so each and every Internet hosting platform that employs compression in real time needs to have ample power to support this 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 whole code.
Data Compression in Web Hosting
The compression algorithm employed by the ZFS file system which runs on our cloud internet hosting platform is called LZ4. It can boost the performance of any Internet site hosted in a web hosting account on our end since not only does it compress data much better than algorithms used by various other file systems, but it also uncompresses data at speeds that are higher than the HDD reading speeds. This is achieved by using a lot of CPU processing time, which is not a problem for our platform since it uses clusters of powerful servers working together. One more advantage of LZ4 is that it enables us to create backup copies faster and on reduced disk space, so we shall have a couple of daily backups of your files and databases and their generation will not influence the performance of the servers. In this way, we could always restore all content that you could have erased by accident.
Data Compression in Semi-dedicated Servers
Your semi-dedicated server account will be created on a cloud platform which is run on the innovative ZFS file system. The aforementioned uses a compression algorithm called LZ4, that is significantly better than all other algorithms when it comes to compression ratio and speed. The gain is visible especially when data is being uncompressed and not only is LZ4 much faster than other algorithms, but it is also quicker in uncompressing data than a system is in reading from a HDD. That's why Internet sites 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 backups of the semi-dedicated accounts that we keep require significantly less space and are generated faster, which allows us to have a number of daily backups of your files and databases.