I'm running apache2 on a EC2 micro instance with ~600 mb RAM. The instance was running for almost a year without problems, but in the last weeks it just keeps crashing, because the server reached MaxClients.

The server basically runs few websites, one wordpress blog(not often used), company website(most used) and 2 small sites, which are just internal.

The database for the blog runs on RDS, so there's no Mysql running on this web server.

When I came to the company, the server already was setup and is running apache + mod_php + prefork. We want to migrate that in the future to a nginx + php-fpm, but it still needs further testing. So for now I have to stick with the old setup.

I also use CloudFlare DDOS protection in front of the server, because it was attacked a couple of the times in the last weeks.

My company don't want to pay money for a better web server at this point, so I have to stick with the micro instance also. Additionally the code for the website we run is really bad and slow and sometimes a single page load can take up to 15 seconds. The whole website is dynamic and written in PHP, so caching isn't really an option here. It's a customized search for users.

I've already turned off KeepAlive, which improved the performance a little bit.

My prefork config looks like the following:

 StartServers 2
 MinSpareServers 2
 MaxSpareServers 5
 ServerLimit 10
 MaxClients 10
 MaxRequestsPerChild 100

The server just becomes unresponsive after a while running and I've run the following command to see how many connections there are: netstat | grep http | wc -l 75

Trying to restart apache helps for a short moment, but after that a while the apache process(es) become unresponsive again.

I've the following modules enabled(output of apache2ctl -M)

Loaded Modules:
 core_module (static)
 log_config_module (static)
 logio_module (static)
 version_module (static)
 mpm_prefork_module (static)
 http_module (static)
 so_module (static)
 alias_module (shared)
 authz_host_module (shared)
 deflate_module (shared)
 dir_module (shared)
 expires_module (shared)
 mime_module (shared)
 negotiation_module (shared)
 php5_module (shared)
 rewrite_module (shared)
 setenvif_module (shared)
 ssl_module (shared)
 status_module (shared)
Syntax OK

apache2.conf

# Security
ServerTokens OS
ServerSignature On
TraceEnable On
ServerName "web.example.com"
ServerRoot "/etc/apache2"
PidFile ${APACHE_PID_FILE}
Timeout 30
KeepAlive off
User www-data
Group www-data

AccessFileName .htaccess
<Files ~ "^\.ht">
  Order allow,deny
  Deny from all
  Satisfy all
</Files>

<Directory />
  Options FollowSymLinks
  AllowOverride None
</Directory>

DefaultType none
HostnameLookups Off
ErrorLog /var/log/apache2/error.log
LogLevel warn
EnableSendfile On

#Listen 80


Include /etc/apache2/mods-enabled/*.load
Include /etc/apache2/mods-enabled/*.conf
Include /etc/apache2/ports.conf

LogFormat "%h %l %u %t \"%r\" %>s %b \"%{Referer}i\" \"%{User-Agent}i\"" combined
LogFormat "%h %l %u %t \"%r\" %>s %b" common
LogFormat "%{Referer}i -> %U" referer
LogFormat "%{User-agent}i" agent
Include /etc/apache2/conf.d/*.conf
Include /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/*.conf

Vhost of main site

<VirtualHost *:80>
  ServerName www.example.com
  ## Vhost docroot
   DocumentRoot /srv/www/jenkins/Web
  ## Directories, there should at least be a declaration for /srv/www/jenkins/Web

  <Directory /srv/www/jenkins/Web>
    AllowOverride All
    Order allow,deny
    Allow from all
  </Directory>

  ## Load additional static includes

  ## Logging
  ErrorLog /var/log/apache2/www.example.com.error.log
  LogLevel warn
  ServerSignature Off
  CustomLog /var/log/apache2/www.example.com.access.log combined

  ## Rewrite rules
  RewriteEngine On
  RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www.example.com$
  RewriteRule ^.*$ http://www.example.com%{REQUEST_URI} [R=301,L]

  ## Server aliases
  ServerAlias www.example.invalid
  ServerAlias example.com

  ## Custom fragment
<Location /srv/www/jenkins/Web/library>
 Order Deny,Allow
 Deny from all
</Location>
<Files ~ "^\.(.+)">
  Order deny,allow
  deny from all
</Files>

</VirtualHost>