The term data compression refers to lowering the number of bits of info that should be stored or transmitted. This can be done with or without the loss of info, which means that what will be erased in the course of the compression will be either redundant data or unneeded one. When the data is uncompressed afterwards, in the first case the info and its quality will be the same, whereas in the second case the quality shall be worse. There are different compression algorithms that are better for different type of information. Compressing and uncompressing data in most cases takes plenty of processing time, which means that the server executing the action must have sufficient resources in order to be able to process the data fast enough. An example how information can be compressed is to store just how many consecutive positions should have 1 and how many should have 0 inside the binary code as an alternative to storing the actual 1s and 0s.

Data Compression in Cloud Hosting

The compression algorithm that we work with on the cloud hosting platform where your new cloud hosting account shall be created is named LZ4 and it is applied by the advanced ZFS file system which powers the system. The algorithm is far better than the ones other file systems employ as its compression ratio is a lot higher and it processes data considerably quicker. The speed is most noticeable when content is being uncompressed as this happens quicker than information can be read from a hdd. Because of this, LZ4 improves the performance of each Internet site stored on a server that uses the algorithm. We use LZ4 in one more way - its speed and compression ratio allow us to generate multiple daily backups of the entire content of all accounts and keep them for one month. Not only do our backups take less space, but their generation doesn't slow the servers down like it often happens with various other file systems.

Data Compression in Semi-dedicated Servers

The ZFS file system which runs on the cloud platform where your semi-dedicated server 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 web content, as its ratio is very high and it will uncompress data faster than the same data can be read from a hard drive if it were uncompressed. This way, using LZ4 will boost every Internet site that runs on a platform where the algorithm is enabled. This high performance requires a lot of CPU processing time, that's provided by the large number of clusters working together as part of our platform. In addition to that, LZ4 makes it possible for us to generate several backup copies of your content every day and keep them for a month as they will take a reduced amount of space than regular backups and will be created considerably quicker without loading the servers.