On 29 Feb 2012, at 19:33, Dan Axtell wrote: > > Basically I want to have various virtual hosts be reverse proxied to various > back end servers (e.g. mod_perl for some legacy apps, a Catalyst app under > fast CGI). I tried this with Nginx and it all seemed to work but what I > discovered is that over time the backend Apache processes were using more and > more memory, whereas when I go back to a monolithic Apache the memory usage > stays pretty stable.
Your fat apache is an application server. Only have sufficient MaxClients to saturate CPU if you hammer it. Recycle memory with a sensible MaxRequestsPerChild. Make forking new children cheap by loading the world in startup.pl. Read Stas's guide.