Data compression is the lowering of the number of bits that need to be saved or transmitted and the process is quite important in the internet hosting field due to the fact that data kept on HDDs is usually compressed to take less space. There're different algorithms for compressing data and they provide different effectiveness based on the content. Many of them remove only the redundant bits, so no data will be lost, while others erase unneeded bits, which leads to worse quality once the particular data is uncompressed. This process uses plenty of processing time, so a hosting server has to be powerful enough to be able to compress and uncompress data instantly. An example how binary code could be compressed is by "remembering" that there're five consecutive 1s, for example, rather than storing all five 1s.

Data Compression in Cloud Hosting

The cloud web hosting platform where your cloud hosting account will be made uses the reliable ZFS file system. The LZ4 compression method that the aforementioned employs is greater in numerous aspects, and not only does it compress information better than any compression method which many other file systems use, but it's also quicker. The benefits are significant especially on compressible content which includes website files. While it may sound irrational, uncompressing data with LZ4 is faster than reading uncompressed data from a hard disk drive, so the performance of every site hosted on our servers will be better. The better and quicker compression rates also make it possible for us to make a number of daily backups of the full content in each hosting account, so in the event you delete anything by mistake, the last back-up copy that we have will not be more than a few hours old. This is possible as the backups take a lot less space and their generation is quick enough, to not influence the performance of our servers.

Data Compression in Semi-dedicated Servers

Your semi-dedicated server account shall be created on a cloud platform that runs on the leading-edge ZFS file system. The latter uses a compression algorithm known as LZ4, that's far better than all the other algorithms when it comes to compression ratio and speed. The gain is noticeable especially when data is being uncompressed and not only is LZ4 faster than other algorithms, but it is also quicker in uncompressing data than a system is in reading from a HDD. That's why websites running on a platform which uses LZ4 compression perform better since the algorithm is most efficient when it processes compressible data i.e. website content. One more advantage of using LZ4 is that the backups of the semi-dedicated accounts that we keep require much less space and they are generated a lot quicker, which enables us to have a number of daily backups of all your files and databases.