The term data compression means decreasing the number of bits of data which needs to be stored or transmitted. This can be achieved with or without the loss of information, which means that what will be erased in the course of the compression will be either redundant data or unneeded one. When the data is uncompressed later on, in the first case the information and the quality will be identical, whereas in the second case the quality shall be worse. You will find various compression algorithms that are better for various type of info. Compressing and uncompressing data often takes lots of processing time, therefore the server carrying out the action must have ample resources to be able to process the data fast enough. A simple example how information can be compressed is to store just how many consecutive positions should have 1 and how many should have 0 in the binary code as an alternative to storing the particular 1s and 0s.

Data Compression in Cloud Web Hosting

The compression algorithm that we work with on the cloud internet hosting platform where your new cloud web hosting account shall be created is named LZ4 and it is used by the cutting-edge ZFS file system that powers the system. The algorithm is greater than the ones other file systems use because its compression ratio is a lot higher and it processes data considerably faster. The speed is most noticeable when content is being uncompressed as this happens faster than information can be read from a hdd. Consequently, LZ4 improves the performance of each site located on a server which uses the algorithm. We take advantage of LZ4 in one more way - its speed and compression ratio allow us to produce a number of daily backup copies of the full content of all accounts and keep them for one month. Not only do these backup copies take less space, but also their generation does not slow the servers down like it often happens with other file systems.