I am having a problem with an OSQA site. It is Django/Apache/mod_wsgi configured site. Every hour, the CPU spikes to 164% (Average) for task HTTPD. After 10 minutes, it frees back up. I have reviewed the logs, cron tables, made many config changes, but cannot track this problem down. Can someone please look at the information below and let me know if it is a configuration problem, or if anyone else has experienced this issue.

1. Running TOP shows HTTPD using 165% of CPU
2. VMware performance monitor also displays spikes.
3. This happens every hour for 10 minutes.

4. I have the following information from server status

   Server Version: Apache/2.2.15 (Unix) DAV/2 mod_wsgi/3.2 Python/2.6.6
   Server Built: Feb 7 2012 09:50:15
   
   Current Time: Sunday, 10-Jun-2012 21:44:29 EDT
   Restart Time: Sunday, 10-Jun-2012 19:44:51 EDT
   Parent Server Generation: 0
   Server uptime: 1 hour 59 minutes 37 seconds
   Total accesses: 1088 - Total Traffic: 11.5 MB
   CPU Usage: u80.26 s243.8 cu0 cs0 - 4.52% CPU load
   .152 requests/sec - 1682 B/second - 10.8 kB/request
   4 requests currently being processed, 11 idle workers
   
   ....._..........__......W.......................................
   ...................................C._..._....._L__._L_._.......
   ......................
   
   Scoreboard Key:
   "_" Waiting for Connection, "S" Starting up, "R" Reading Request,
   "W" Sending Reply, "K" Keepalive (read), "D" DNS Lookup,
   "C" Closing connection, "L" Logging, "G" Gracefully finishing,
   "I" Idle cleanup of worker, "." Open slot with no current process
   
   Srv PID Acc M   CPU     SS  Req Conn    Child   Slot    Client  VHost   Request
   0-0 -   0/0/34  .   0.42    327 17  0.0 0.00    0.67    127.0.0.1   osqa.informs.org    OPTIONS * HTTP/1.0
   1-0 -   0/0/22  .   0.31    339 32  0.0 0.00    0.26    127.0.0.1   osqa.informs.org    OPTIONS * HTTP/1.0
   2-0 -   0/0/22  .   0.65    358 10  0.0 0.00    0.31    127.0.0.1   osqa.informs.org    OPTIONS * HTTP/1.0
   3-0 -   0/0/31  .   1.03    378 31  0.0 0.00    0.60    127.0.0.1   osqa.informs.org    OPTIONS * HTTP/1.0
   4-0 -   0/0/20  .   0.45    356 9   0.0 0.00    0.31    127.0.0.1   osqa.informs.org    OPTIONS * HTTP/1.0
   5-0 18852   0/16/34 _   0.98    27  18120   0.0 0.37    0.62    69.180.250.36   osqa.informs.org    GET /questions/289/what-is-the-difference-between-operations-re
   6-0 -   0/0/32  .   0.94    309 29  0.0 0.00    0.64    127.0.0.1   osqa.informs.org    OPTIONS * HTTP/1.0
   7-0 -   0/0/31  .   1.15    382 32  0.0 0.00    0.75    127.0.0.1   osqa.informs.org    OPTIONS * HTTP/1.0
   8-0 -   0/0/21  .   0.28    403 19  0.0 0.00    0.20    127.0.0.1   osqa.informs.org    OPTIONS * HTTP/1.0
   9-0 -   0/0/32  .   1.37    288 16  0.0 0.00    0.60    127.0.0.1   osqa.informs.org    OPTIONS * HTTP/1.0
   10-0    -   0/0/33  .   1.72    383 16  0.0 0.00    0.40    127.0.0.1   osqa.informs.org    OPTIONS * HTTP/1.0
   

5. I am running Django 1.3

6. This is a mod_wsgi configuration and copied is the wsgi.conf file:

   <IfModule !python_module>
   <IfModule !wsgi_module>
   
   LoadModule wsgi_module modules/mod_wsgi.so
   
   <IfModule wsgi_module>
   
   <Directory /var/www/osqa>
    Order allow,deny
    Allow from all
    #Deny from all
   </Directory>
   
   WSGISocketPrefix /var/run/wsgi
   WSGIPythonEggs /var/tmp
   WSGIDaemonProcess OSQA maximum-requests=10000
   WSGIProcessGroup OSQA
   
   Alias /admin_media/ /usr/lib/python2.6/site-packages/Django-1.2.5-py2.6.egg/django/contrib/admin/media/
   Alias /m/ /var/www/osqa/forum/skins/
   Alias /upfiles/ /var/www/osqa/forum/upfiles/
   
   <Directory /var/www/osqa/forum/skins>
    Order allow,deny
    Allow from all
   </Directory>
   
   WSGIScriptAlias / /var/www/osqa/osqa.wsgi
   
   </IfModule>
   </IfModule>
   </IfModule>
   

7. This is the httpd.conf file

   Timeout 120
   KeepAlive Off
   MaxKeepAliveRequests 100
   MaxKeepAliveRequests 400
   KeepAliveTimeout 3
   
   <IfModule prefork.c>
   Startservers      15
   MinSpareServers   10
   MaxSpareServers   20
   ServerLimit      50
   MaxClients       50
   MaxRequestsPerChild  0
   </IfModule>
   
   
   <IfModule worker.c>
   StartServers         4
   MaxClients         150
   MinSpareThreads      25
   MaxSpareThreads     75
   ThreadsPerChild      25
   MaxRequestsPerChild  0
   </IfModule>
   

8. We are using MySQL

9. The server is an ESX4i, configured for the VM to use 4 CPUs and 8 GB Ram. Hyper threading is enabled, 2 physical CPU's, with 4 Logical. the CPU are Intel Xeon 2.8 GHz. Total memory is 12GB