Data compression is the reduction of the number of bits that need to be stored or transmitted and this process is really important in the internet hosting field as information stored on hard disk drives is usually compressed so as to take less space. There are different algorithms for compressing data and they have different effectiveness depending on the content. A lot of them remove only the redundant bits, so that no data will be lost, while others remove unnecessary bits, which results in worse quality once the data is uncompressed. The method uses plenty of processing time, so a web hosting server has to be powerful enough in order to be able to compress and uncompress data instantly. An example how binary code may be compressed is by "remembering" that there are five consecutive 1s, for example, rather than storing all five 1s.

Data Compression in Cloud Website Hosting

The compression algorithm used by the ZFS file system which runs on our cloud web hosting platform is called LZ4. It can enhance the performance of any site hosted in a cloud website hosting account on our end because not only does it compress data significantly better than algorithms used by alternative file systems, but it uncompresses data at speeds which are higher than the hard drive reading speeds. This is achieved by using a great deal of CPU processing time, that is not a problem for our platform considering the fact that it uses clusters of powerful servers working together. An additional advantage of LZ4 is that it allows us to create backups more quickly and on less disk space, so we can have several daily backups of your files and databases and their generation won't affect the performance of the servers. That way, we could always recover all the content that you could have erased by mistake.

Data Compression in Semi-dedicated Servers

If you host your Internet sites in a semi-dedicated server account with our company, you will be able to experience the advantages of LZ4 - the powerful compression algorithm used by the ZFS file system that's behind our advanced cloud web hosting platform. What differentiates LZ4 from all of the other algorithms out there is that it has a better compression ratio and it is way quicker, in particular with regard to uncompressing website content. It does that even quicker than uncompressed data can be read from a hard drive, so your sites will perform faster. The higher speed is at the expense of using a considerable amount of CPU processing time, that's not an issue for our platform as it consists of numerous clusters working together. Together with the improved performance, you will also have multiple daily backup copies at your disposal, so you can recover any deleted content with several clicks. The backup copies are available for an entire month and we can afford to store them since they need a lot less space than standard backups.