Data compression is the compacting of info by decreasing the number of bits that are stored or transmitted. Thus, the compressed info will need considerably less disk space than the initial one, so much more content can be stored using the same amount of space. You can find different compression algorithms that function in different ways and with some of them just the redundant bits are removed, therefore once the information is uncompressed, there's no decrease in quality. Others delete unnecessary bits, but uncompressing the data subsequently will lead to lower quality in comparison with the original. Compressing and uncompressing content needs a significant amount of system resources, in particular CPU processing time, so each and every hosting platform which uses compression in real time needs to have ample power to support that attribute. An example how information can be compressed is to replace a binary code such as 111111 with 6x1 i.e. "remembering" how many consecutive 1s or 0s there should be instead of keeping the actual code.
Data Compression in Website Hosting
The compression algorithm that we work with on the cloud hosting platform where your new website hosting account shall be created is known as LZ4 and it is applied by the revolutionary ZFS file system which powers the system. The algorithm is a lot better than the ones other file systems use because its compression ratio is higher and it processes data significantly faster. The speed is most noticeable when content is being uncompressed since this happens more quickly than information can be read from a hard disk. Because of this, LZ4 improves the performance of each and every Internet site stored on a server that uses this particular algorithm. We take advantage of LZ4 in one more way - its speed and compression ratio make it possible for us to produce a number of daily backups of the full content of all accounts and keep them for one month. Not only do the backups take less space, but in addition their generation will not slow the servers down like it can often happen with various other file systems.
Data Compression in Semi-dedicated Hosting
Your semi-dedicated hosting account shall be created on a cloud platform that runs using the state-of-the-art ZFS file system. The aforementioned uses a compression algorithm named LZ4, which is far better than alternative algorithms in terms of compression ratio and speed. The gain is apparent particularly when data is being uncompressed and not only is LZ4 quicker than other algorithms, but it is also quicker in uncompressing data than a system is in reading from a HDD. This is why websites running on a platform that employs LZ4 compression perform faster as the algorithm is most efficient when it processes compressible data i.e. site content. One more advantage of using LZ4 is that the backup copies of the semi-dedicated accounts which we keep need significantly less space and they're generated quicker, which enables us to keep several daily backups of all your files and databases.