Topic: Busy Servers reaches Maxclients.

[samv18]

Hello all,

I am new member of apachelounge and hope that some one can help me out with the issues I am facing since a month with apache.

I am using apache 2.2 webserver and tomcat 6 as app server.
I have two unix boxes (let say A and B) where apache is installed for load balancing purpose.

The issue is now and then I see that on both the server reaches to 250 busy servers which makes my site very slow and after some time the site is unaccessible.

When I see this I restart apache on both unix boxes and also restart my app server.

But that does not help. As soon as I start apache the httpd process ramps up to 12 (ps -ef | grep httpd) within a minute and the busy servers still remains at 250.

The only I have to do is wait and watch till the busy servers goes down to 250 and then site is back to normal.

Some times it takes hours for busy servers to go down below 250.

I dont understand that why even restarting apache and tomcat doesnt help. why the busy servers are still at 250. even after I restart.

This is what I have in httpd.conf

<IfModule worker.c>
ServerLimit 80
StartServers 2
MaxClients 250
MinSpareThreads 25
MaxSpareThreads 75
ThreadsPerChild 25
MaxRequestsPerChild 0
</IfModule>

I tried to increase MaxClients to 300, which also didnt help and apache or httpd process shuts down by itself.

Any help is much appreciated.

Thanks

[Qmpeltaty]

Try to disable/enable KeepAlive and check the results.

[samv18]

Thanks for your reply.
Its currently disabled. Should I enable it?
What value should I have in MaxKeepAliveRequests and KeepAliveTimeout?

[James Blond]

KeepAlive reduces the number of requests since the client will reuse a connection.