I have a question about Apache MPM Prefork configuration on VPS servers.
One slicehost articles, they suggest to set MaxClients to 40 if I have 256MB RAM on my virtual server. (http://articles.slicehost.com/2010/5/20/configuring-the-apache-mpm-on-debian)
However since each client request uses approx 50MB RAM memory, swapping is guaranteed and my VPS slows down.
PID RSS COMMAND 10146 45944 /usr/sbin/apache2 -k start 10147 52528 /usr/sbin/apache2 -k start 10150 49680 /usr/sbin/apache2 -k start 10151 48756 /usr/sbin/apache2 -k start
I've found out that if I set MaxClients to 4 (!) instead, I don't get any swapping, and the webserver is supposed to be faster (or am I wrong?)
So, I don't understand why they do suggest 40 instead.