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 web hosting field because data recorded on HDDs is usually compressed to take less space. There're different algorithms for compressing data and they offer different efficiency based on the content. Some of them remove only the redundant bits, so no data will be lost, while others delete unnecessary bits, which results in worse quality once the data is uncompressed. This process employs plenty of processing time, which means that an internet hosting server has to be powerful enough in order to be able to compress and uncompress data instantly. One example how binary code could be compressed is by "remembering" that there are five sequential 1s, for example, as an alternative to storing all five 1s.
Data Compression in Shared Hosting
The compression algorithm employed by the ZFS file system which runs on our cloud internet hosting platform is called LZ4. It can enhance the performance of any Internet site hosted in a shared hosting account on our end since not only does it compress data significantly better than algorithms employed by other file systems, but it also uncompresses data at speeds that are higher than the hard disk reading speeds. This can be done by using a great deal of CPU processing time, which is not a problem for our platform for the reason that it uses clusters of powerful servers working together. A further advantage of LZ4 is that it allows us to create backups quicker and on lower disk space, so we shall have several daily backups of your files and databases and their generation won't affect the performance of the servers. In this way, we could always restore any kind of content that you could have deleted by mistake.
Data Compression in Semi-dedicated Hosting
Your semi-dedicated hosting account will be created on a cloud platform that runs using the innovative ZFS file system. The aforementioned uses a compression algorithm called LZ4, that is far better than other algorithms regarding compression ratio and speed. The gain is noticeable especially when data is being uncompressed and not only is LZ4 faster than other algorithms, but it is also faster in uncompressing data than a system is in reading from a HDD. This is the reason why Internet sites running on a platform which uses LZ4 compression perform better because the algorithm is most effective when it processes compressible data i.e. web content. An additional advantage of using LZ4 is that the backup copies of the semi-dedicated accounts which we keep require a lot less space and they're generated quicker, which enables us to keep a couple of daily backups of your files and databases.