Data compression is the compacting of data by reducing the number of bits which are stored or transmitted. Because of this, the compressed information will take less disk space than the initial one, so additional content could be stored using the same amount of space. There're many different compression algorithms which function in different ways and with many of them only the redundant bits are erased, which means that once the information is uncompressed, there is no decrease in quality. Others delete unneeded bits, but uncompressing the data later on will result in reduced quality in comparison with the original. Compressing and uncompressing content requires a huge amount of system resources, especially CPU processing time, so every Internet hosting platform which uses compression in real time must have sufficient power to support this attribute. An example how information can be compressed is to replace a binary code such as 111111 with 6x1 i.e. "remembering" the number of consecutive 1s or 0s there should be instead of keeping the entire code.

Data Compression in Shared Hosting

The compression algorithm which we employ on the cloud hosting platform where your new shared hosting account shall be created is called LZ4 and it's used by the state-of-the-art ZFS file system which powers the platform. The algorithm is greater than the ones other file systems work with as its compression ratio is higher and it processes data significantly faster. The speed is most noticeable when content is being uncompressed as this happens quicker than info can be read from a hard drive. Therefore, LZ4 improves the performance of every site located on a server which uses this particular algorithm. We use LZ4 in an additional way - its speed and compression ratio let us produce several daily backups of the entire content of all accounts and store them for thirty days. Not only do the backup copies take less space, but also their generation does not slow the servers down like it can often happen with alternative file systems.

Data Compression in Semi-dedicated Hosting

The ZFS file system which runs on the cloud platform where your semi-dedicated hosting account will be created uses a powerful compression algorithm called LZ4. It is among the best algorithms out there and certainly the most efficient one when it comes to compressing and uncompressing website content, as its ratio is very high and it will uncompress data a lot faster than the same data can be read from a hard drive if it were uncompressed. This way, using LZ4 will quicken every website that runs on a platform where the algorithm is enabled. This high performance requires lots of CPU processing time, that's provided by the multitude of clusters working together as part of our platform. Furthermore, LZ4 enables us to generate several backup copies of your content every day and keep them for a month as they will take much less space than regular backups and will be created much quicker without loading the servers.