Data compression is the reduction of the number of bits that need to be stored or transmitted and the process is very important in the web hosting field due to the fact that information stored on hard disk drives is often compressed to take less space. You will find various algorithms for compressing information and they provide different efficiency depending on the content. A lot of them remove only the redundant bits, so no data will be lost, while others erase unneeded bits, which results in worse quality once the data is uncompressed. This method uses a lot of processing time, which means that a hosting server has to be powerful enough to be able to compress and uncompress data immediately. An instance how binary code can be compressed is by "remembering" that there are five sequential 1s, for example, in contrast to storing all five 1s.
Data Compression in Shared Hosting
The compression algorithm that we use on the cloud internet hosting platform where your new shared hosting account will be created is called LZ4 and it is applied by the cutting-edge ZFS file system that powers the system. The algorithm is superior to the ones other file systems use because its compression ratio is much higher and it processes data significantly quicker. The speed is most noticeable when content is being uncompressed as this happens at a faster rate than info can be read from a hard drive. For that reason, LZ4 improves the performance of any Internet site hosted on a server that uses this algorithm. We use LZ4 in an additional way - its speed and compression ratio allow us to make multiple daily backup copies of the full content of all accounts and keep them for one month. Not only do these backups take less space, but their generation won't slow the servers down like it often happens with some 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 latter uses a compression algorithm known as LZ4, that is far better than all other algorithms with regard to compression ratio and speed. The gain is noticeable especially when data is being uncompressed and not only is LZ4 much 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 better since the algorithm is most efficient when it processes compressible data i.e. site content. An additional advantage of using LZ4 is that the backup copies of the semi-dedicated accounts that we keep need a lot less space and they're generated a lot quicker, which allows us to have multiple daily backups of your files and databases.