Data compression is the lowering of the number of bits which need to be saved or transmitted and the process is very important in the internet hosting field since data filed on hard drives is typically compressed so as to take less space. There're various algorithms for compressing data and they have different efficiency depending on the content. Many of them remove only the redundant bits, so that no data will be lost, while others erase unnecessary bits, which leads to worse quality once the particular data is uncompressed. The process needs a lot of processing time, therefore a hosting server needs to be powerful enough so as to be able to compress and uncompress data in real time. One example how binary code can be compressed is by "remembering" that there are five sequential 1s, for example, in contrast to storing all five 1s.
Data Compression in Web Hosting
The compression algorithm used by the ZFS file system that runs on our cloud web hosting platform is named LZ4. It can improve the performance of any site hosted in a web hosting account on our end since not only does it compress data much better than algorithms employed by other file systems, but it also uncompresses data at speeds which are higher than the hard drive reading speeds. This is achieved by using a lot of CPU processing time, which is not a problem for our platform for the reason that it uses clusters of powerful servers working together. An additional advantage of LZ4 is that it allows us to create backup copies more speedily and on lower disk space, so we shall have several daily backups of your files and databases and their generation will not influence the performance of the servers. This way, we can always recover any kind of content that you could have deleted by accident.
Data Compression in Semi-dedicated Hosting
If you host your Internet sites in a semi-dedicated hosting account from our firm, you can experience the advantages of LZ4 - the powerful compression algorithm employed by the ZFS file system that's behind our advanced cloud hosting platform. What distinguishes LZ4 from all the other algorithms out there is that it has a better compression ratio and it is much faster, especially with regard to uncompressing web content. It does that even faster than uncompressed information can be read from a hard disk drive, so your Internet sites will perform faster. The higher speed is at the expense of using a considerable amount of CPU processing time, which is not a problem for our platform since it consists of numerous clusters working together. Together with the better performance, you will also have multiple daily backup copies at your disposal, so you could restore any deleted content with a few clicks. The backups are available for an entire month and we can afford to keep them because they need considerably less space than ordinary backups.