Data compression is the reduction of the number of bits that need to be saved or transmitted and this process is rather important in the internet hosting field since information stored on hard drives is generally compressed so as to take less space. There are 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 results in worse quality once the particular data is uncompressed. The method requires a lot of processing time, therefore a hosting server needs to be powerful enough so as to be able to compress and uncompress data in real time. An instance how binary code could be compressed is by "remembering" that there are five sequential 1s, for example, in contrast to storing all five 1s.

Data Compression in Shared Website Hosting

The compression algorithm used by the ZFS file system that runs on our cloud internet hosting platform is called LZ4. It can supercharge the performance of any website hosted in a shared website hosting account on our end because not only does it compress info more efficiently than algorithms used by other file systems, but it uncompresses data at speeds which are higher than the HDD reading speeds. This can be done by using a great deal of CPU processing time, which is not a problem for our platform due to the fact that it uses clusters of powerful servers working together. One more advantage of LZ4 is that it allows us to generate backup copies a lot faster and on lower disk space, so we will have several daily backups of your databases and files and their generation won't change the performance of the servers. This way, we can always recover all content that you may have erased by accident.

Data Compression in Semi-dedicated Servers

If you host your Internet sites in a semi-dedicated server account with our company, you can experience the advantages of LZ4 - the powerful compression algorithm used by the ZFS file system that is behind our advanced cloud hosting platform. What separates LZ4 from all other algorithms out there is that it has a better compression ratio and it is considerably quicker, particularly when it comes to uncompressing website content. It does that even faster than uncompressed data can be read from a hard disk drive, so your sites will perform better. The higher speed is at the expense of using lots of CPU processing time, that's not a problem for our platform because it consists of multiple clusters working together. In addition to the improved performance, you will also have multiple daily backups at your disposal, so you'll be able to restore any deleted content with a few clicks. The backups are available for a whole month and we can afford to store them because they take a lot less space than traditional backups.