Data compression is the compacting of info by reducing the number of bits which are stored or transmitted. Consequently, the compressed information requires substantially less disk space than the initial one, so more content might be stored on the same amount of space. There are different compression algorithms that function in different ways and with some of them only the redundant bits are erased, so once the information is uncompressed, there's no loss of quality. Others erase unneeded bits, but uncompressing the data at a later time will lead to lower quality in comparison with the original. Compressing and uncompressing content takes a huge amount of system resources, and in particular CPU processing time, so every Internet hosting platform which uses compression in real time should have ample power to support that feature. An example how info can be compressed is to substitute a binary code such as 111111 with 6x1 i.e. "remembering" the number of consecutive 1s or 0s there should be instead of saving the entire code.
Data Compression in Cloud Website Hosting
The compression algorithm that we employ on the cloud internet hosting platform where your new cloud website hosting account shall be created is named LZ4 and it's used by the advanced ZFS file system that powers the system. The algorithm is superior to the ones other file systems work with as its compression ratio is higher and it processes data a lot faster. The speed is most noticeable when content is being uncompressed as this happens even faster than data can be read from a hard drive. As a result, LZ4 improves the performance of any Internet site hosted on a server that uses this particular algorithm. We use LZ4 in an additional way - its speed and compression ratio make it possible for us to produce several daily backups of the whole content of all accounts and store them for thirty days. Not only do our backup copies take less space, but in addition their generation won't slow the servers down like it can often happen with various other file systems.
Data Compression in Semi-dedicated Servers
In case you host your websites in a semi-dedicated server account from our company, you can experience the advantages of LZ4 - the powerful compression algorithm used by the ZFS file system that's behind our advanced cloud Internet hosting platform. What distinguishes LZ4 from all other algorithms out there is that it has an improved compression ratio and it is much quicker, particularly with regard to uncompressing web content. It does that even quicker than uncompressed info can be read from a hard disk drive, so your sites will perform better. The higher speed comes at the expense of using lots of CPU processing time, that's not a problem for our platform because it consists of numerous clusters working together. Besides the improved performance, you'll have multiple daily backups at your disposal, so you'll be able to recover any deleted content with several clicks. The backups are available for an entire month and we can afford to store them since they take significantly less space than standard backups.