Apache gets too slow

Question

My apache starts to slow down from nothing, 5 minutes after I turn it on and the users start to access the site and apache starts to slow down, I used the TOP command in centos to see the processes and the result is this below (not pasted everything if it would not get too big):

PID USER      PR  NI    VIRT    RES    SHR S  %CPU %MEM     TIME+ COMMAND
7461 mysql     20   0 2664688 266500   7240 S   6.8  3.3   1:55.17 mysqld
14200 apache    20   0  607620  17904   4372 R   2.5  0.2   0:13.45 httpd
14398 apache    20   0  607488  17900   4344 R   2.5  0.2   0:12.49 httpd
13806 apache    20   0  607908  19852   5980 R   2.2  0.2   0:19.31 httpd
13808 apache    20   0  607948  18408   4536 R   2.2  0.2   0:17.65 httpd
13847 apache    20   0  607488  17940   4400 R   2.2  0.2   0:16.45 httpd
13994 apache    20   0  607488  17888   4300 R   2.2  0.2   0:14.08 httpd
14019 apache    20   0  607488  17888   4312 R   2.2  0.2   0:13.89 httpd
14035 apache    20   0  607620  17900   4304 R   2.2  0.2   0:13.69 httpd
14037 apache    20   0  607488  17892   4332 R   2.2  0.2   0:13.37 httpd
14054 apache    20   0  607488  17892   4316 R   2.2  0.2   0:13.35 httpd
14073 apache    20   0  607572  17900   4316 R   2.2  0.2   0:13.41 httpd
14106 apache    20   0  607488  17928   4352 R   2.2  0.2   0:13.28 httpd
14180 apache    20   0  607488  17896   4320 R   2.2  0.2   0:13.05 httpd
14212 apache    20   0  607832  18228   4516 R   2.2  0.2   0:13.27 httpd

Is there any way to stop him from being so slow? the configuration of my server is:

Centos 7 8GB of Memory 4 vCPUs

I already put 256MB, 1GB in memory_limit and also did nothing. also put the following configurations in apache httpd and also did not help anything:

KeepAlive On
KeepAliveTimeout 5
MaxKeepAliveRequests 500
HostnameLookups Off

My server averages 5,000 hits an hour. someone could help me with this?

Answer 1

I advise you to change apache for nginx ... or use Nginx as apache proxy. will gain more performance in both response and consumption.

If it is not possible (depending on the application), you need to see several other system settings and optimize it.

It may be that the max file Opens (kernel config) of your OS is too low ... it has several factors that influence.