Data Compression

Discover more to do with the many benefits of data compression. Find out how it works and just what data is usually compressed.

Data compression is the compacting of information by reducing the number of bits that are stored or transmitted. This way, the compressed data requires considerably less disk space than the initial one, so a lot more content could be stored on the same amount of space. There're different compression algorithms which function in different ways and with several of them only the redundant bits are removed, therefore once the information is uncompressed, there's no loss of quality. Others erase unnecessary bits, but uncompressing the data later on will result in lower quality in comparison with the original. Compressing and uncompressing content consumes a huge amount of system resources, and in particular CPU processing time, so each and every web hosting platform which employs compression in real time needs to have ample power to support this attribute. An example how info can be compressed is to substitute a binary code such as 111111 with 6x1 i.e. "remembering" how many consecutive 1s or 0s there should be instead of keeping the whole code.

: Data Compression in Cloud Web Hosting

The ZFS file system that operates on our cloud hosting platform employs a compression algorithm named LZ4. The latter is significantly faster and better than every other algorithm out there, particularly for compressing and uncompressing non-binary data i.e. internet content. LZ4 even uncompresses data quicker than it is read from a hard disk drive, which improves the overall performance of websites hosted on ZFS-based platforms. Because the algorithm compresses data very well and it does that very quickly, we can generate several backups of all the content kept in the cloud web hosting accounts on our servers every day. Both your content and its backups will need less space and since both ZFS and LZ4 work very fast, the backup generation will not affect the performance of the hosting servers where your content will be kept.; Data Compression in Semi-dedicated Servers

Your semi-dedicated server account will be created on a cloud platform that is run on the innovative ZFS file system. The aforementioned uses a compression algorithm known as LZ4, which is significantly better than alternative algorithms when it comes to compression ratio and speed. The gain is visible especially when data is being uncompressed and not only is LZ4 much quicker than other algorithms, but it is also faster in uncompressing data than a system is in reading from a hard disk. Because of this sites running on a platform that uses LZ4 compression perform better since the algorithm is most efficient when it processes compressible data i.e. site content. Another advantage of using LZ4 is that the backup copies of the semi-dedicated accounts which we keep take a lot less space and they're generated faster, which allows us to keep multiple daily backups of your files and databases.