The term data compression refers to lowering the number of bits of info that needs to be saved or transmitted. This can be done with or without the loss of info, so what will be removed throughout the compression shall be either redundant data or unneeded one. When the data is uncompressed afterwards, in the first case the data and the quality shall be identical, whereas in the second case the quality shall be worse. There are different compression algorithms that are more effective for different type of information. Compressing and uncompressing data often takes a lot of processing time, therefore the server performing the action must have plenty of resources to be able to process the data quick enough. An example how information can be compressed is to store how many consecutive positions should have 1 and how many should have 0 in the binary code instead of storing the actual 1s and 0s.

Data Compression in Shared Hosting

The compression algorithm which we use on the cloud internet hosting platform where your new shared hosting account shall be created is known as LZ4 and it's used by the exceptional ZFS file system that powers the system. The algorithm is a lot better than the ones other file systems employ because its compression ratio is higher and it processes data a lot quicker. The speed is most noticeable when content is being uncompressed since this happens at a faster rate than info can be read from a hard disk. Therefore, LZ4 improves the performance of every site located on a server that uses the algorithm. We take advantage of LZ4 in one more way - its speed and compression ratio make it possible for us to produce multiple daily backup copies of the full content of all accounts and store them for one month. 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

Your semi-dedicated hosting account shall be created on a cloud platform which runs using the innovative ZFS file system. The aforementioned uses a compression algorithm known as LZ4, that is significantly better than all the other algorithms in terms of compression ratio and speed. The gain is noticeable particularly when data is being uncompressed and not only is LZ4 faster than other algorithms, but it is also quicker in uncompressing data than a system is in reading from a HDD. That's why sites running on a platform which uses LZ4 compression perform faster since the algorithm is most effective when it processes compressible data i.e. website 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 they're generated faster, which enables us to keep several daily backups of all your files and databases.