Data compression is the decrease of the number of bits that have to be stored or transmitted and the process is really important in the internet hosting field as data stored on hard disks is typically compressed to take less space. You can find various algorithms for compressing data and they provide different effectiveness based on the content. A number of them remove just the redundant bits, so no data can be lost, while others erase unneeded bits, which leads to worse quality when the data is uncompressed. This method needs plenty of processing time, so a web hosting server needs to be powerful enough in order to be able to compress and uncompress data in real time. An example how binary code may be compressed is by "remembering" that there are five consecutive 1s, for example, as an alternative to storing all five 1s.
Data Compression in Web Hosting
The compression algorithm that we work with on the cloud hosting platform where your new web hosting account will be created is named LZ4 and it is used by the state-of-the-art ZFS file system that powers the platform. The algorithm is much better than the ones other file systems work with because its compression ratio is much higher and it processes data significantly quicker. The speed is most noticeable when content is being uncompressed as this happens faster than info can be read from a hard disk. Consequently, LZ4 improves the performance of each site hosted on a server which uses this particular algorithm. We take advantage of LZ4 in one more way - its speed and compression ratio let us generate a couple of daily backup copies of the whole content of all accounts and store them for thirty days. Not only do these backup copies take less space, but also their generation won't slow the servers down like it can often happen with many other file systems.
Data Compression in Semi-dedicated Servers
The semi-dedicated server plans which we supply are created on a powerful cloud platform which runs on the ZFS file system. ZFS employs a compression algorithm named LZ4 that is superior to any other algorithm you can find in terms of speed and data compression ratio when it comes to processing web content. This is valid particularly when data is uncompressed because LZ4 does that more quickly than it would be to read uncompressed data from a hard drive and because of this, websites running on a platform where LZ4 is enabled will work at a higher speed. We're able to take full advantage of the feature regardless of the fact that it needs quite a great deal of CPU processing time because our platform uses a wide range of powerful servers working together and we never make accounts on a single machine like most companies do. There is a further advantage of using LZ4 - given that it compresses data rather well and does that very fast, we can also generate several daily backups of all accounts without affecting the performance of the servers and keep them for a whole month. By doing this, you will always be able to restore any content that you delete by accident.