The term data compression refers to reducing the number of bits of data that has to be saved or transmitted. This can be done with or without losing data, so what will be removed at the time of the compression can be either redundant data or unneeded one. When the data is uncompressed subsequently, in the first case the information and the quality will be identical, whereas in the second case the quality will be worse. There're different compression algorithms which are more efficient for various sort of information. Compressing and uncompressing data often takes a lot of processing time, so the server carrying out the action must have sufficient resources in order to be able to process the data fast enough. One simple example how information can be compressed is to store just how many sequential positions should have 1 and just how many should have 0 in the binary code as an alternative to storing the actual 1s and 0s.

Data Compression in Cloud Hosting

The cloud hosting platform where your cloud hosting account is made works by using the cutting-edge ZFS file system. The LZ4 compression method which the aforementioned uses is better in various aspects, and not only does it compress information better than any compression method that similar file systems use, but it's also much faster. The benefits can be significant especially on compressible content which includes website files. Even though it may sound irrational, uncompressing data with LZ4 is quicker than reading uncompressed info from a hard disk, so the performance of each Internet site hosted on our servers will be better. The better and quicker compression rates also make it possible for us to produce multiple daily backups of the whole content in each and every Internet hosting account, so in the event you delete something by mistake, the last back-up copy that we have won't be more than a few hours old. This can be done because the backups take significantly less space and their generation is fast enough, to not change the performance of the servers.

Data Compression in Semi-dedicated Hosting

Your semi-dedicated hosting account will be created on a cloud platform that runs using the cutting-edge ZFS file system. The latter uses a compression algorithm called LZ4, that's a lot better than all other algorithms when it comes to compression ratio and speed. The gain is visible especially 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 disk drive. That is why Internet sites running on a platform which uses LZ4 compression perform faster because the algorithm is most efficient when it processes compressible data i.e. web content. One more advantage of using LZ4 is that the backup copies of the semi-dedicated accounts that we keep need significantly less space and they are generated quicker, which allows us to keep several daily backups of your files and databases.