Lots of apache processes

Hi all,

For one of my customers I am managing a DirectAdmin based webserver with quite some traffic, at peak times about 400 hits per second, and thereby querying about 1500 query's /s.

The load on the server is not a problem, it is handeling quite well, but in those peak moments the server creates about 3000 (!) apache processes, and it also creates around 3000 simultaneous MySQL connections.

I have never seen any numbers as high as these, I'm using the prefork MPM. Are these numbers usual, or am I doing something wrong?

My MPM configuration is as following:

<IfModule mpm_prefork_module>
StartServers 50
MinSpareServers 50
MaxSpareServers 75
ServerLimit 5000
MaxClients 5000
MaxRequestsPerChild 0
</IfModule>

Lowering the ServerLimit or MaxClients results in an unreachable website.

Thanks in advance!

Seeing an issue like this as well.... what was your solution?

Are these numbers usual, or am I doing something wrong?

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Isn't right time to install a frontend to your apache? You might want to use something like: oops, squid, nginx, lighttpd together with apache.