Data compression is the lowering of the number of bits which have to be saved or transmitted and this particular process is very important in the internet hosting field because information recorded on hard disks is typically compressed in order to take less space. There are various algorithms for compressing data and they provide different efficiency based upon the content. Many of them remove only the redundant bits, so no data will be lost, while others delete unneeded bits, which leads to worse quality once the particular data is uncompressed. This method consumes plenty of processing time, so a hosting server needs to be powerful enough in order to be able to compress and uncompress data in real time. An instance how binary code can be compressed is by "remembering" that there're five consecutive 1s, for example, in contrast to storing all five 1s.

Data Compression in Hosting

The compression algorithm employed by the ZFS file system which runs on our cloud internet hosting platform is called LZ4. It can supercharge the performance of any website hosted in a hosting account with us because not only does it compress info more effectively than algorithms employed by various file systems, but it also uncompresses data at speeds that are higher than the hard drive reading speeds. This is achieved by using a lot of CPU processing time, which is not a problem for our platform since it uses clusters of powerful servers working together. One more advantage of LZ4 is that it allows us to generate backups more rapidly and on reduced disk space, so we will have several daily backups of your files and databases and their generation will not influence the performance of the servers. This way, we could always recover the content that you may have erased by mistake.

Data Compression in Semi-dedicated Servers

In case you host your sites in a semi-dedicated server account with our firm, you will be able to experience the advantages of LZ4 - the powerful compression algorithm employed by the ZFS file system that is behind our advanced cloud hosting platform. What separates LZ4 from all of the other algorithms out there is that it has an improved compression ratio and it is much faster, 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 plenty of CPU processing time, that's not a problem for our platform as it consists of multiple clusters working together. Besides the better performance, you'll also have multiple daily backup copies at your disposal, so you'll be able to restore any deleted content with just a couple of clicks. The backup copies are available for an entire month and we can afford to store them since they need significantly less space compared to traditional backups.