The term data compression refers to reducing the number of bits of data that should be stored or transmitted. This can be done with or without losing info, so what will be erased during the compression will be either redundant data or unneeded one. When the data is uncompressed later on, in the first case the information and its quality shall be identical, while in the second case the quality will be worse. There're various compression algorithms that are better for different type of data. Compressing and uncompressing data generally takes a lot of processing time, which means that the server executing the action must have plenty of resources to be able to process your data fast enough. A simple example how information can be compressed is to store just how many consecutive positions should have 1 and how many should have 0 within the binary code instead of storing the particular 1s and 0s.
Data Compression in Shared Web Hosting
The compression algorithm which we work with on the cloud internet hosting platform where your new shared web hosting account shall be created is named LZ4 and it is applied by the advanced ZFS file system which powers the platform. The algorithm is greater than the ones other file systems use as its compression ratio is higher and it processes data a lot quicker. The speed is most noticeable when content is being uncompressed as this happens more quickly than data can be read from a hard drive. Because of this, LZ4 improves the performance of each and every Internet site located on a server which uses this particular algorithm. We take advantage of LZ4 in one more way - its speed and compression ratio allow us to generate several daily backup copies of the entire content of all accounts and keep them for one month. Not only do these backup copies take less space, but their generation does not slow the servers down like it often happens with other file systems.
Data Compression in Semi-dedicated Servers
The ZFS file system that runs on the cloud platform where your semi-dedicated server account will be created uses a powerful compression algorithm called LZ4. It's one of the best algorithms out there and positively the most efficient one when it comes to compressing and uncompressing website content, as its ratio is very high and it can uncompress data a lot faster than the same data can be read from a hard disk drive if it were uncompressed. In this way, using LZ4 will speed up any kind of Internet site that runs on a platform where this algorithm is enabled. The high performance requires lots of CPU processing time, which is provided by the numerous clusters working together as part of our platform. In addition, LZ4 enables us to generate several backup copies of your content every day and have them for one month as they will take a smaller amount of space than typical backups and will be created much more quickly without loading the servers.