Data compression is the compacting of info by lowering the number of bits which are stored or transmitted. Thus, the compressed information requires much less disk space than the initial one, so a lot more content can be stored using identical amount of space. There are different compression algorithms that work in different ways and with a number of them just the redundant bits are erased, so once the info is uncompressed, there is no loss of quality. Others remove unneeded bits, but uncompressing the data later on will result in lower quality in comparison with the original. Compressing and uncompressing content consumes a huge amount of system resources, particularly CPU processing time, so any web hosting platform which employs compression in real time should have enough power to support this feature. An example how information can be compressed is to substitute a binary code such as 111111 with 6x1 i.e. "remembering" what number of sequential 1s or 0s there should be instead of storing the entire code.
Data Compression in Cloud Web Hosting
The compression algorithm employed by the ZFS file system which runs on our cloud internet hosting platform is named LZ4. It can upgrade the performance of any Internet site hosted in a cloud web hosting account on our end since not only does it compress info significantly better than algorithms used by various other file systems, but it also uncompresses data at speeds that are higher than the hard drive 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 enables us to generate backup copies a lot faster and on lower disk space, so we can have several daily backups of your databases and files and their generation will not change the performance of the servers. This way, we could always recover all content that you may have deleted by mistake.
Data Compression in Semi-dedicated Hosting
If you host your websites in a semi-dedicated hosting account from our firm, you will be able to experience the advantages of LZ4 - the powerful compression algorithm employed 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 an improved compression ratio and it is considerably quicker, in particular when it comes to uncompressing website content. It does that even faster than uncompressed information can be read from a hard drive, so your websites will perform faster. The higher speed is at the expense of using plenty of CPU processing time, which is not a problem for our platform as it consists of numerous clusters working together. Together with the better performance, you will also have multiple daily backup copies at your disposal, so you can restore any deleted content with just a couple of clicks. The backups are available for an entire month and we can afford to keep them because they need a lot less space compared to traditional backups.