The term data compression refers to decreasing the number of bits of information that has to be saved or transmitted. This can be done with or without the loss of information, so what will be removed throughout the compression can be either redundant data or unnecessary one. When the data is uncompressed subsequently, in the first case the information and its quality shall be the same, whereas in the second case the quality will be worse. There are various compression algorithms that are better for various kind of data. Compressing and uncompressing data normally takes a lot of processing time, so the server carrying out the action needs to have ample resources in order to be able to process your info fast enough. One simple example how information can be compressed is to store how many sequential positions should have 1 and just how many should have 0 in the binary code as an alternative to storing the particular 1s and 0s.
Data Compression in Shared Web Hosting
The compression algorithm used by the ZFS file system which runs on our cloud web hosting platform is called LZ4. It can upgrade the performance of any site hosted in a shared web hosting account on our end because not only does it compress data significantly better than algorithms used by alternative file systems, but it also uncompresses data at speeds which are higher than the hard drive reading speeds. This is achieved by using a great deal of CPU processing time, that is not a problem for our platform because it uses clusters of powerful servers working together. An additional advantage of LZ4 is that it allows us to make backup copies at a higher speed and on lower disk space, so we can have multiple daily backups of your databases and files and their generation won't affect the performance of the servers. That way, we can always recover all content that you could have erased by mistake.
Data Compression in Semi-dedicated Hosting
If you host your Internet sites in a semi-dedicated hosting account with our firm, you'll be able to experience the advantages of LZ4 - the powerful compression algorithm employed by the ZFS file system which is behind our advanced cloud hosting platform. What differentiates LZ4 from all other algorithms out there is that it has a higher compression ratio and it is considerably faster, especially with regard to uncompressing web content. It does that even quicker than uncompressed information can be read from a hard drive, so your websites will perform faster. The higher speed is at the expense of using a lot of CPU processing time, that is not an issue for our platform because it consists of a lot of clusters working together. In combination with the better performance, you'll also have multiple daily backups at your disposal, so you'll be able to recover any deleted content with a few clicks. The backup copies are available for a whole month and we can afford to store them because they take a lot less space compared to traditional backups.