LOTS of " /usr/local/apache/bin/httpd -k start -DSSL"

[alexmack]

what are these? can anything be done to reduce them?

[garrettp]

These are Apache children spawned by your webserver to handle serving webpages. The default MPM for cPanel is prefork, which spawns a new child process for every request that is currently being handled. When the load is low, Apache keeps a certain number of child workers alive to more quickly serve requests as they come in.

So the short of the long is, this is normal operation, and reducing the number of these processes is not a "solution."

[konrath]

what are these? can anything be done to reduce them?

Hello

try

KeepAlive Off

in /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf

[B12Org]

keepAlive being off is probably a good idea, it has been helpful in us reducing load and being able to better profile connections.