The term data compression describes lowering the number of bits of data which should be stored or transmitted. This can be done with or without losing information, which means that what will be erased during the compression can be either redundant data or unnecessary one. When the data is uncompressed later on, in the first case the information and the quality will be the same, while in the second case the quality shall be worse. There're various compression algorithms which are more efficient for different type of data. Compressing and uncompressing data in most cases takes lots of processing time, which means that the server executing the action must have plenty of resources to be able to process your data quick enough. One simple example how information can be compressed is to store how many sequential positions should have 1 and how many should have 0 in the binary code instead of storing the particular 1s and 0s.

Data Compression in Shared Hosting

The compression algorithm which we use on the cloud internet 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 that powers the system. The algorithm is much better than the ones other file systems employ since its compression ratio is a lot higher and it processes data significantly quicker. The speed is most noticeable when content is being uncompressed since this happens quicker than info can be read from a hdd. As a result, LZ4 improves the performance of any website hosted on a server which uses this particular algorithm. We use LZ4 in one more way - its speed and compression ratio make it possible for us to generate several daily backup copies of the full content of all accounts and keep them for a month. Not only do our backups take less space, but also their generation doesn't slow the servers down like it often happens with alternative file systems.

Data Compression in Semi-dedicated Servers

Your semi-dedicated server account will be created on a cloud platform which is run on the leading-edge ZFS file system. The aforementioned uses a compression algorithm known as LZ4, which is significantly better than all the other algorithms regarding compression ratio and speed. The gain is significant particularly 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 drive. That's why websites running on a platform which uses LZ4 compression perform better as the algorithm is most efficient when it processes compressible data i.e. website content. Another advantage of using LZ4 is that the backups of the semi-dedicated accounts that we keep require less space and they're generated a lot faster, which allows us to keep a couple of daily backups of your files and databases.