Data compression is the compacting of data by decreasing the number of bits which are stored or transmitted. Thus, the compressed data takes considerably less disk space than the initial one, so much more content might be stored using the same amount of space. There are many different compression algorithms which work in different ways and with some of them only the redundant bits are removed, which means that once the info is uncompressed, there is no decrease in quality. Others remove unnecessary bits, but uncompressing the data following that will lead to reduced quality in comparison with the original. Compressing and uncompressing content consumes a large amount of system resources, in particular CPU processing time, therefore every Internet hosting platform that employs compression in real time should have adequate power to support that feature. An example how data can be compressed is to replace a binary code such as 111111 with 6x1 i.e. "remembering" the number of sequential 1s or 0s there should be instead of keeping the whole code.

Data Compression in Shared Web Hosting

The compression algorithm which we use on the cloud internet hosting platform where your new shared web hosting account will be created is named LZ4 and it is applied by the state-of-the-art ZFS file system that powers the platform. The algorithm is far better than the ones other file systems work with since its compression ratio is much higher and it processes data considerably quicker. The speed is most noticeable when content is being uncompressed since this happens even faster than info can be read from a hard disk. For that reason, LZ4 improves the performance of each and every Internet site located 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 make multiple daily backups of the entire content of all accounts and keep them for a month. Not only do these backup copies take less space, but their generation doesn't slow the servers down like it can often happen with some other file systems.

Data Compression in Semi-dedicated Hosting

Your semi-dedicated hosting account shall be created on a cloud platform that is run on the state-of-the-art ZFS file system. The aforementioned uses a compression algorithm known as LZ4, that's much better than all other algorithms with regard to compression ratio and speed. The gain is visible especially when data is being uncompressed and not only is LZ4 much quicker than other algorithms, but it is also quicker in uncompressing data than a system is in reading from a hard disk. Because of this websites running on a platform which uses LZ4 compression perform faster as the algorithm is most effective when it processes compressible data i.e. website content. An additional advantage of using LZ4 is that the backup copies of the semi-dedicated accounts which we keep take less space and are generated a lot quicker, which enables us to store several daily backups of all your files and databases.