The term data compression identifies reducing the number of bits of data which has to be saved or transmitted. This can be done with or without losing info, so what will be removed at the time of the compression will be either redundant data or unnecessary one. When the data is uncompressed afterwards, in the first case the info and its quality will be identical, whereas in the second case the quality shall be worse. You can find different compression algorithms which are more efficient for various sort of info. Compressing and uncompressing data generally takes plenty of processing time, which means that the server carrying out the action must have sufficient resources in order to be able to process the info quick 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 within the binary code as an alternative to storing the actual 1s and 0s.
Data Compression in Hosting
The compression algorithm employed by the ZFS file system that runs on our cloud internet hosting platform is known as LZ4. It can boost the performance of any Internet site hosted in a hosting account on our end because not only does it compress info more effectively than algorithms employed by alternative file systems, but it uncompresses data at speeds which are higher than the HDD reading speeds. This is achieved by using a great deal of CPU processing time, which is not a problem for our platform considering the fact that it uses clusters of powerful servers working together. One more advantage of LZ4 is that it allows us to make backups more quickly and on reduced disk space, so we will have several daily backups of your files and databases and their generation won't change the performance of the servers. In this way, we can always restore any content that you could have removed by accident.
Data Compression in Semi-dedicated Servers
In case you host your Internet sites 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 the other algorithms out there is that it has a higher compression ratio and it is much quicker, especially with regard to uncompressing website content. It does that even quicker than uncompressed info can be read from a hard drive, so your websites will perform better. The higher speed comes at the expense of using a lot of CPU processing time, that is not an issue for our platform since it consists of multiple clusters working together. Along with the improved performance, you will also have multiple daily backup copies at your disposal, so you can 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 need a lot less space than conventional backups.