Data compression is the reduction of the number of bits which have to be stored or transmitted and this process is quite important in the web hosting field because data stored on hard disk drives is usually compressed so as to take less space. There are different algorithms for compressing information and they offer different effectiveness based on the content. A lot of them remove just the redundant bits, so no data will be lost, while others delete unnecessary bits, which results in worse quality when your data is uncompressed. The method consumes a lot of processing time, so a 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 Website Hosting

The compression algorithm used by the ZFS file system which runs on our cloud internet hosting platform is called LZ4. It can boost the performance of any site hosted in a website hosting account with us because not only does it compress data significantly better than algorithms employed by alternative file systems, but also uncompresses data at speeds which are higher than the hard disk reading speeds. This can be done by using a great deal of CPU processing time, that is not a problem for our platform since it uses clusters of powerful servers working together. An additional advantage of LZ4 is that it enables us to generate backup copies at a higher speed and on reduced disk space, so we can have several daily backups of your files and databases and their generation won't change the performance of the servers. This way, we can always restore all the content that you may have erased by mistake.

Data Compression in Semi-dedicated Servers

If you host your sites in a semi-dedicated server account from our firm, you will be able to experience the advantages of LZ4 - the powerful compression algorithm employed by the ZFS file system that is behind our advanced cloud web hosting platform. What separates LZ4 from all other algorithms out there is that it has a higher compression ratio and it is way quicker, in particular with regard to uncompressing web content. It does that even quicker than uncompressed data can be read from a hard drive, so your Internet sites will perform faster. The higher speed is at the expense of using plenty of CPU processing time, that's not an issue for our platform because it consists of numerous clusters working together. Besides the improved performance, you'll also have multiple daily backup copies at your disposal, so you will be able to recover any deleted content with several clicks. The backup copies are available for a whole month and we can afford to keep them as they need considerably less space than ordinary backups.