The term data compression means lowering the number of bits of info that should be saved or transmitted. This can be done with or without losing info, so what will be erased during the compression shall be either redundant data or unnecessary one. When the data is uncompressed subsequently, in the first case the data and its quality will be the same, whereas in the second case the quality shall be worse. You can find different compression algorithms that are more efficient for different kind of info. Compressing and uncompressing data normally takes plenty of processing time, which means that the server executing the action needs to have enough resources to be able to process your data fast enough. An example how information can be compressed is to store just how many sequential positions should have 1 and just how many should have 0 within the binary code as an alternative to storing the actual 1s and 0s.
Data Compression in Cloud Website Hosting
The compression algorithm which we work with on the cloud hosting platform where your new cloud website 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 far better than the ones other file systems work with as its compression ratio is higher and it processes data a lot quicker. The speed is most noticeable when content is being uncompressed as this happens even faster than information can be read from a hard drive. Therefore, LZ4 improves the performance of each and every Internet site stored on a server that uses this algorithm. We take advantage of LZ4 in an additional way - its speed and compression ratio let us produce a couple of daily backups of the entire content of all accounts and store them for a month. Not only do the backup copies take less space, but in addition their generation does not slow the servers down like it can often happen with 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 leading-edge ZFS file system. The aforementioned uses a compression algorithm known as LZ4, that is far better than alternative algorithms with regard to compression ratio and speed. The gain is visible particularly 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. That is why websites running on a platform that employs LZ4 compression perform better because the algorithm is most effective when it processes compressible data i.e. web content. An additional advantage of using LZ4 is that the backups of the semi-dedicated accounts which we keep need less space and they are generated a lot quicker, which allows us to keep a couple of daily backups of all your files and databases.