Data compression is the compacting of info by lowering the number of bits which are stored or transmitted. Consequently, the compressed data takes considerably less disk space than the original one, so much more content can be stored using the same amount of space. There are various compression algorithms which function in different ways and with several of them only the redundant bits are deleted, which means that once the info is uncompressed, there's no decrease in quality. Others delete unneeded bits, but uncompressing the data afterwards will result in lower quality in comparison with the original. Compressing and uncompressing content needs a huge amount of system resources, in particular CPU processing time, so every web hosting platform which employs compression in real time should have enough power to support this attribute. An example how information can be compressed is to replace a binary code such as 111111 with 6x1 i.e. "remembering" what number of sequential 1s or 0s there should be instead of keeping the entire code.
Data Compression in Semi-dedicated Servers
Your semi-dedicated server account will be created on a cloud platform which is run on the advanced ZFS file system. The aforementioned uses a compression algorithm known as LZ4, that's far better than other algorithms regarding compression ratio and speed. The gain is apparent especially when data is being uncompressed and not only is LZ4 a lot faster than other algorithms, but it is also faster in uncompressing data than a system is in reading from a hard disk drive. This is the reason why websites running on a platform which uses LZ4 compression perform faster as the algorithm is most efficient when it processes compressible data i.e. web content. One more advantage of using LZ4 is that the backups of the semi-dedicated accounts which we keep require much less space and are generated a lot faster, which allows us to keep multiple daily backups of all your files and databases.