The term data compression means reducing the number of bits of info that has to be stored or transmitted. This can be achieved with or without losing info, which means that what will be deleted at the time of the compression shall be either redundant data or unnecessary one. When the data is uncompressed subsequently, in the first case the information and the quality will be the same, whereas in the second case the quality shall be worse. You will find various compression algorithms that are more effective for different kind of information. Compressing and uncompressing data normally takes lots of processing time, therefore the server carrying out the action needs to have enough resources to be able to process your info quick enough. One simple example how information can be compressed is to store just how many sequential positions should have 1 and just how many should have 0 inside the binary code rather than storing the actual 1s and 0s.
Data Compression in Shared Hosting
The compression algorithm which we use on the cloud hosting platform where your new shared hosting account shall be created is named LZ4 and it's used by the leading-edge ZFS file system which powers the system. The algorithm is much better than the ones other file systems work with since its compression ratio is much higher and it processes data considerably faster. The speed is most noticeable when content is being uncompressed since this happens more quickly than data can be read from a hard drive. For that reason, LZ4 improves the performance of any website stored on a server which uses this algorithm. We take full advantage of LZ4 in one more way - its speed and compression ratio make it possible for us to generate a number of daily backups of the entire content of all accounts and keep them for 30 days. Not only do our backups take less space, but in addition their generation doesn't slow the servers down like it can often happen with various other file systems.
Data Compression in Semi-dedicated Hosting
Your semi-dedicated hosting account shall be created on a cloud platform which runs using the advanced ZFS file system. The latter uses a compression algorithm named LZ4, that is a lot better than all the other algorithms regarding compression ratio and speed. The gain is noticeable especially when data is being uncompressed and not only is LZ4 a lot faster than other algorithms, but it is also quicker in uncompressing data than a system is in reading from a hard drive. This is why websites running on a platform which employs LZ4 compression perform better because the algorithm is most efficient when it processes compressible data i.e. site content. One more advantage of using LZ4 is that the backups of the semi-dedicated accounts which we keep require much less space and they're generated a lot quicker, which enables us to store several daily backups of your files and databases.