Data compression is the lowering of the number of bits that need to be stored or transmitted and the process is rather important in the web hosting field since data recorded on hard disks is usually compressed to take less space. You can find various algorithms for compressing data and they provide different efficiency based upon the content. A number of them remove just the redundant bits, so no data will be lost, while others remove unneeded bits, which leads to worse quality once the particular data is uncompressed. This process requires a lot of processing time, therefore a hosting server needs to be powerful enough so as to be able to compress and uncompress data immediately. An instance how binary code may be compressed is by "remembering" that there're five sequential 1s, for example, in contrast to storing all five 1s.
Data Compression in Cloud Hosting
The compression algorithm employed by the ZFS file system that runs on our cloud web hosting platform is named LZ4. It can enhance the performance of any website hosted in a cloud hosting account with us because not only does it compress info much better than algorithms used by various file systems, but it also uncompresses data at speeds which are higher than the HDD reading speeds. This can be done by using a great deal of CPU processing time, which is not a problem for our platform due to the fact that it uses clusters of powerful servers working together. A further advantage of LZ4 is that it enables us to generate backup copies at a higher speed and on lower disk space, so we can have a couple of daily backups of your files and databases and their generation won't affect the performance of the servers. That way, we could always recover all content that you could have deleted by accident.
Data Compression in Semi-dedicated Servers
In case you host your websites in a semi-dedicated server account with our firm, you will be able to experience the advantages of LZ4 - the powerful compression algorithm employed by the ZFS file system which is behind our advanced cloud web hosting platform. What distinguishes LZ4 from all of the other algorithms out there is that it has a better compression ratio and it is way quicker, especially with regard to uncompressing web content. It does that even quicker than uncompressed data can be read from a hard drive, so your sites will perform better. The higher speed comes at the expense of using lots of CPU processing time, that is not an issue for our platform because it consists of a large number of clusters working together. In addition to the improved performance, you will also have multiple daily backup copies at your disposal, so you could restore any deleted content with just a couple of clicks. The backups are available for a whole month and we can afford to keep them because they take considerably less space than ordinary backups.