Data compression is the compacting of info by lowering the number of bits which are stored or transmitted. Because of this, the compressed information needs much less disk space than the original one, so a lot more content can be stored on identical amount of space. There're different compression algorithms which function in different ways and with some of them only the redundant bits are erased, so once the data is uncompressed, there's no loss of quality. Others remove unneeded bits, but uncompressing the data afterwards will lead to lower quality in comparison with the original. Compressing and uncompressing content requires a huge amount of system resources, particularly CPU processing time, so any hosting platform which employs compression in real time should have ample power to support that attribute. An example how data can be compressed is to replace a binary code such as 111111 with 6x1 i.e. "remembering" what number of consecutive 1s or 0s there should be instead of saving the entire code.
Data Compression in Hosting
The ZFS file system that is run on our cloud Internet hosting platform uses a compression algorithm named LZ4. The aforementioned is a lot faster and better than every other algorithm out there, particularly for compressing and uncompressing non-binary data i.e. internet content. LZ4 even uncompresses data faster than it is read from a hard disk, which improves the overall performance of websites hosted on ZFS-based platforms. Due to the fact that the algorithm compresses data very well and it does that very quickly, we're able to generate several backup copies of all the content kept in the hosting accounts on our servers every day. Both your content and its backups will need reduced space and since both ZFS and LZ4 work very quickly, the backup generation will not affect the performance of the servers where your content will be kept.
Data Compression in Semi-dedicated Hosting
Your semi-dedicated hosting account will be created on a cloud platform which is run on the leading-edge ZFS file system. The aforementioned uses a compression algorithm named LZ4, that is significantly better than all other algorithms regarding compression ratio and speed. The gain is noticeable especially when data is being uncompressed and not only is LZ4 much quicker than other algorithms, but it is also quicker in uncompressing data than a system is in reading from a HDD. This is the reason why Internet sites running on a platform which employs LZ4 compression perform better as the algorithm is most effective when it processes compressible data i.e. site content. A further advantage of using LZ4 is that the backup copies of the semi-dedicated accounts which we keep take significantly less space and are generated faster, which enables us to keep a number of daily backups of all your files and databases.