Data compression is the reduction of the number of bits that should be saved or transmitted and this process is very important in the internet hosting field due to the fact that data stored on hard disks is generally compressed to take less space. You will find various algorithms for compressing information and they offer different efficiency based on the content. Some of them remove just the redundant bits, so no data will be lost, while others delete unneeded bits, which results in worse quality once the data is uncompressed. This method uses plenty of processing time, so a hosting server should be powerful enough in order to be able to compress and uncompress data in real time. An example how binary code can be compressed is by "remembering" that there're five sequential 1s, for example, in contrast to storing all five 1s.
Data Compression in Shared Hosting
The cloud internet hosting platform where your shared hosting account shall be created employs the impressive ZFS file system. The LZ4 compression method that the latter employs is superior in many aspects, and not only does it compress data better than any compression method which a number of other file systems use, but it is also considerably faster. The gains can be significant especially on compressible content such as website files. Although it may sound irrational, uncompressing data with LZ4 is quicker than reading uncompressed info from a hard disk drive, so the performance of each Internet site hosted on our servers will be enhanced. The better and faster compression rates also make it possible for us to produce numerous daily backups of the full content in each and every web hosting account, so in the event you delete something by mistake, the last backup that we have will not be more than a few hours old. This is possible because the backups take a lot less space and their generation is quick enough, so as to not affect the performance of the servers.
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 latter uses a compression algorithm known as LZ4, that's significantly better than various other algorithms with regard to compression ratio and speed. The gain is visible particularly 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 is why Internet sites running on a platform that uses LZ4 compression perform better because the algorithm is most effective when it processes compressible data i.e. site content. A further advantage of using LZ4 is that the backup copies of the semi-dedicated accounts which we keep take much less space and are generated a lot quicker, which allows us to keep a couple of daily backups of your files and databases.