Topic: Tuning apache2.2

[MichaelT]

Overview of specs

Server Specs: Intel(r)Xeon(TM)CPU 3.2GHz 3.19GHz, 4.00 GB of RAM

Operating system: Windows Server 2003 Standard Edition SP2

Apache & php version: Apache/2.2.15 (Win32) PHP/5.2.6 mod_auth_sspi/1.0.4

Mysql version: 5.1.59

Website info: college Moodle(1.9) site with <2000 users and <300 users logged on at one time.

Hi

This is my first ever forum post so go easy on me

I am fairly new to playing around with Apache,PHP and MySQL. I have managed to install all the necessary components and get them to work together to run web sites. However i have now moved on to tuning the Apache server so that i can get peak performance. Most of what i have read up on seems pretty simple like caching, enabling Gzip, and setting KeepAlive On with a KeepAliveTimeout of 2 etc however the main issue i'm having at the moment is understanding Apache's threading process and whether or not i should bother tweaking this. i enabled mod_status plugin so that i could view the servers necessary info. now what interested me was the following, (am i right i referring to workers as threads?)

'14 requests currently being processed, 50 idle workers' can somebody explain this to me?


i noticed that the number of requests being processed and idle workers fluctuates up and down which seems fine to me as i am assuming that these represent connections made by users and threads (workers) waiting for a connection to be made? But what surprised me this morning when i came into work i found this was not updating a lot the number of requests currently being processed was constantly above 60/58, see below.

'60 requests currently being processed, 4 idle workers'.

I looked at the 'Seconds since beginning of most recent request' figures for a few of the worker's and found they were in their hours. Is there any reason as to why this happened?

Also is 64 enough workers ok for a maximum usage of <300 users logged onto the site?

cheers[/u]

[Steffen]

When there is "-" the "M" column in mod-status then that slot is finished and Apache can use it for a next connection. These can hang around for some time, but that does not matter.

'60 requests currently being processed, 4 idle workers'.

That's close to the max in ThreadsPerChild (defined in httpd-mpm.conf), up it to 128 or more.

Any mpm messages in you error.log ?

You have KeepAliveTimeout set on 2 sec, standard is 5 when you have left enough idle workers.

From the Docu:
Setting KeepAliveTimeout to a high value may cause performance problems in heavily loaded servers. The higher the timeout, the more server processes will be kept occupied waiting on connections with idle clients.


Steffen