I have a server that I`m trying to optimize. It went from a standalone script to getting a cluster modification.
So now, we have a main server, and 2 smaller ones for transcoding.
The issue is, apache is using ALOT of memory, and it spans child processes like crazy.
Here is the prefork :


Code:
<IfModule prefork.c>
    StartServers 5
    MinSpareServers 2
    MaxSpareServers 5
    MaxClients 50
    MaxRequestsPerChild 0
</IfModule>
We`re also running nginx with this.

Code:
user  nobody;
# no need for more workers in the proxy mode
worker_processes  4;
error_log  /var/log/nginx/error.log info;
worker_rlimit_nofile 28000;
events {
 worker_connections 18000; # increase for busier servers
 use epoll; # you should use epoll here for Linux kernels 2.6.x
}
http {
 server_name_in_redirect off;
 server_names_hash_max_size 10240;
 server_names_hash_bucket_size 1024;
 include    mime.types;
 default_type  application/octet-stream;
 server_tokens off;
 sendfile on;
 tcp_nopush on;
 tcp_nodelay on;
 keepalive_timeout  5;
 gzip on;
 gzip_vary on;
 gzip_disable "MSIE [1-6]\.";
 gzip_proxied any;
 gzip_http_version 1.1;
 gzip_min_length  1000;
 gzip_comp_level  6;
 gzip_buffers  16 8k;
# You can remove image/png image/x-icon image/gif image/jpeg if you have slow CPU
 gzip_types    text/plain text/xml text/css application/x-javascript application/xml image/png image/x-icon image/gif image/jpeg application/xml+rss text/javascript application/atom+xml;
 ignore_invalid_headers on;
 client_header_timeout  3m;
 client_body_timeout 3m;
 send_timeout     3m;
 reset_timedout_connection on;
 connection_pool_size  256;
 client_header_buffer_size 256k;
 large_client_header_buffers 4 256k;
 client_max_body_size 200M;
 client_body_buffer_size 128k;
 request_pool_size  32k;
 output_buffers   8 32k;
 postpone_output  1460;
 proxy_temp_path  /tmp/nginx_proxy/;
 client_body_in_file_only on;

   proxy_buffers     16 32k;
   proxy_busy_buffers_size 64k;
   proxy_temp_file_write_size 64k;

 log_format bytes_log "$msec $bytes_sent .";
 include "/etc/nginx/vhosts/*";

}

Can anyone explain why it`s spanning so many apache child processes ?
ie.

Code:
root@host [~]# ps aux | grep httpd | wc -l
51