Data compression is the lowering of the number of bits that should be stored or transmitted and this process is very important in the web hosting field due to the fact that info recorded on HDDs is often compressed to take less space. You can find many different algorithms for compressing information and they have different efficiency based upon the content. Some of them remove just the redundant bits, so that no data will be lost, while others remove unneeded bits, which leads to worse quality once the data is uncompressed. The method consumes plenty of processing time, so a web hosting server has to be powerful enough so as to be able to compress and uncompress data instantly. An example how binary code could be compressed is by "remembering" that there're five sequential 1s, for example, as an alternative to storing all five 1s.

Data Compression in Shared Hosting

The compression algorithm that we use on the cloud hosting platform where your new shared hosting account will be created is known as LZ4 and it's used by the exceptional ZFS file system which powers the system. The algorithm is better than the ones other file systems use as its compression ratio is much higher and it processes data a lot quicker. The speed is most noticeable when content is being uncompressed as this happens faster than data can be read from a hard disk drive. As a result, LZ4 improves the performance of each and every website located on a server that uses the algorithm. We take full advantage of LZ4 in one more way - its speed and compression ratio make it possible for us to generate a number of daily backups of the whole content of all accounts and store them for 30 days. Not only do these backup copies take less space, but in addition their generation does not slow the servers down like it can often happen with many other file systems.

Data Compression in Semi-dedicated Hosting

The ZFS file system that runs on the cloud platform where your semi-dedicated hosting account will be created uses a powerful compression algorithm called LZ4. It is among the best algorithms out there and definitely the most efficient one when it comes to compressing and uncompressing website content, as its ratio is very high and it can uncompress data at a higher speed than the same data can be read from a hard drive if it were uncompressed. In this way, using LZ4 will quicken every site that runs on a platform where this algorithm is enabled. This high performance requires lots of CPU processing time, that's provided by the large number of clusters working together as part of our platform. In addition to that, LZ4 enables us to generate several backup copies of your content every day and save them for one month as they will take much less space than regular backups and will be generated much quicker without loading the servers.