Hello,

Need some help in understanding what do each config item listed mean and how do they relate to each other.

I am using apache 2.2.

Timeout 300
KeepAlive On
MaxKeepAliveRequests 100
KeepAliveTimeout 15
MinSpareServers 5
MaxSpareServers 10
StartServers 5
MaxClients 150
MaxRequestsPerChild 250

Seocondly, I would also like some help in configuring apache so it could serve 1000 concurrent users across all websites (3) hosted on the server.

Processor: Pentium 4 3GHZ DUAL CORE
Memory: 2GB PC3200
Hd1: 120GB 7200RPM SATA / 8MB Cache
Hd2: 120GB 7200RPM SATA / 8MB Cache

Thanks.

Try this out:

Timeout 30

StartServers       3
MinSpareServers    2
MaxSpareServers    5
ServerLimit        200
MaxClients         200
MaxRequestsPerChild  4000

KeepAlive off

Thanks andrei155.

In your suggestion, you have increased MaxClients and MaxRequestsPerChild. Whats the relationship between MaxClients and MasRequestPerChild?

You are also suggesting to switch off KeepAlive, why is that?

Thanks for your help

Basically, MaxClients tells apache the maximum number of requests it's going to handle at once. In this case, I set it to 200. Connections over the specified limit are going to be queued.

MaxRequestsPerChild tells you the amount of requests (or connections) that each apache child is going to process before it's killed.

Since you want quite a few connections at once (you mentioned 1000), I turned keepalive off and decreased timeout. That way, pending connections will clear up faster - and it'll prevent your "MaxClients" or "Serverlimit" from maxing out.

andrei155 Thanks.

One last question, you mentioned that 'pending connections will clear up faster', will they be served within the specified timeout or just die?

Ideally, connections are going to be served. Of course, since we decreased timeout - some connections may be dropped. However I do think that 30 seconds is enough time for any connection.