Data compression is the decrease of the number of bits that need to be saved or transmitted and this process is rather important in the internet hosting field as info recorded on HDDs is generally compressed so as to take less space. There're many different algorithms for compressing information and they have different efficiency depending on the content. Some of them remove only the redundant bits, so that no data will be lost, while others erase unnecessary bits, which leads to worse quality once the data is uncompressed. The method consumes plenty of processing time, which means that a hosting server has to be powerful enough to be able to compress and uncompress data quickly. An instance how binary code could be compressed is by "remembering" that there are five consecutive 1s, for example, as an alternative to storing all five 1s.
Data Compression in Cloud Hosting
The compression algorithm which we employ on the cloud web hosting platform where your new cloud hosting account will be created is named LZ4 and it's used by the advanced ZFS file system which powers the system. The algorithm is a lot better than the ones other file systems work with since its compression ratio is a lot higher and it processes data significantly quicker. The speed is most noticeable when content is being uncompressed since this happens quicker than data can be read from a hard disk. Therefore, LZ4 improves the performance of each and every website hosted on a server that uses this particular algorithm. We take full advantage of LZ4 in one more way - its speed and compression ratio make it possible for us to generate several daily backups of the entire content of all accounts and keep them for one month. Not only do the backup copies take less space, but their generation will not slow the servers down like it can often happen with various other file systems.
Data Compression in Semi-dedicated Servers
If you host your Internet 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 web hosting platform. What differentiates LZ4 from all of the other algorithms out there is that it has a higher compression ratio and it is way quicker, especially when it comes to uncompressing website content. It does that even faster than uncompressed info can be read from a hard drive, so your sites will perform faster. The higher speed is at the expense of using lots of CPU processing time, that's not an issue for our platform since it consists of a lot of clusters working together. Along with the better performance, you will also have multiple daily backups at your disposal, so you will be able to restore any deleted content with several clicks. The backups are available for a whole month and we can afford to keep them because they need significantly less space compared to traditional backups.