Data compression is the compacting of information by decreasing the number of bits which are stored or transmitted. Consequently, the compressed data will need less disk space than the initial one, so more content could be stored on the same amount of space. There are many different compression algorithms that work in different ways and with many of them only the redundant bits are removed, which means that once the information is uncompressed, there is no decrease in quality. Others erase unnecessary bits, but uncompressing the data afterwards will result in reduced quality compared to the original. Compressing and uncompressing content requires a huge amount of system resources, and in particular CPU processing time, therefore each and every Internet hosting platform that employs compression in real time must have enough power to support this feature. An example how data can be compressed is to replace a binary code such as 111111 with 6x1 i.e. "remembering" the number of sequential 1s or 0s there should be instead of keeping the entire code.

Data Compression in Cloud Hosting

The compression algorithm that we work with on the cloud hosting platform where your new cloud hosting account shall be created is called LZ4 and it is applied by the advanced ZFS file system which powers the system. The algorithm is better than the ones other file systems employ as its compression ratio is much higher and it processes data significantly quicker. The speed is most noticeable when content is being uncompressed as this happens more quickly than info can be read from a hard drive. Consequently, LZ4 improves the performance of each and every site located on a server which uses this particular algorithm. We take full advantage of LZ4 in an additional way - its speed and compression ratio make it possible for us to generate multiple daily backups of the whole content of all accounts and store them for 30 days. Not only do our backups take less space, but their generation will not slow the servers down like it often happens with various other file systems.