The term data compression describes decreasing the number of bits of information that should be saved or transmitted. You can do this with or without losing information, which means that what will be deleted at the time of the compression will be either redundant data or unneeded one. When the data is uncompressed subsequently, in the first case the info and the quality will be the same, whereas in the second case the quality will be worse. There're various compression algorithms that are better for different sort of information. Compressing and uncompressing data usually takes a lot of processing time, so the server executing the action should have sufficient resources to be able to process the data quick enough. An example how information can be compressed is to store just how many consecutive positions should have 1 and how many should have 0 inside the binary code instead of storing the actual 1s and 0s.
Data Compression in Cloud Hosting
The compression algorithm that we employ on the cloud internet hosting platform where your new cloud hosting account shall be created is called LZ4 and it's used by the exceptional ZFS file system which powers the system. The algorithm is more advanced than the ones other file systems employ since its compression ratio is much higher and it processes data a lot quicker. The speed is most noticeable when content is being uncompressed since this happens more quickly than information can be read from a hard disk drive. Because of this, LZ4 improves the performance of every Internet site located on a server which uses the algorithm. We use LZ4 in an additional way - its speed and compression ratio make it possible for us to produce several daily backup copies of the entire content of all accounts and store them for thirty days. Not only do the backups take less space, but also their generation doesn't slow the servers down like it can often happen with many other file systems.
Data Compression in Semi-dedicated Hosting
Your semi-dedicated hosting account will be created on a cloud platform that runs on the advanced ZFS file system. The aforementioned uses a compression algorithm called LZ4, that is much better than all other algorithms with regard to compression ratio and speed. The gain is significant especially when data is being uncompressed and not only is LZ4 quicker than other algorithms, but it is also faster in uncompressing data than a system is in reading from a hard disk drive. Because of this websites running on a platform that employs LZ4 compression perform faster because the algorithm is most effective when it processes compressible data i.e. web content. An additional advantage of using LZ4 is that the backups of the semi-dedicated accounts that we keep take a lot less space and they're generated a lot quicker, which enables us to keep multiple daily backups of your files and databases.