Hello.

I am having problems with Apache server. I have seen how there are many times that the server becomes saturated and load up a lot. Executing 'top' in some cases there are values greater than 30 (when there are problems).

I notice that in these moments there are a lot of Apache processes and most of them are 'sleeping', I understand that this can be at least part of my problem.

The server hosts a website that runs PHP (+symfony) and MySQL which has about 600,000 different pages, and I think my biggest problem is when a Yahoo or Google's spider come to pay me a visit.

On the issue of traffic, we usually have 35,000 hits and 60,000 page views a week.

I think the server that I have hired is enough to accept this, if you want to see its features is this:
[ovh.co.uk...]

I think what happens is that we don't have a good Apache server configuration, but if anyone thinks the problem is something else tell me please.

We have this info message in error log continously:
server seems busy, (you may need to increase StartServers, or Min/MaxSpareServers), spawning X children, there are X idle, and X total children

I will put my settings if someone can lend a hand and say we are doing wrong:

#
# Timeout: The number of seconds before receives and sends time out.
#
Timeout 100

#
# KeepAlive: Whether or not to allow persistent connections (more than
# one request per connection). Set to "Off" to deactivate.
#
KeepAlive On

#
# MaxKeepAliveRequests: The maximum number of requests to allow
# during a persistent connection. Set to 0 to allow an unlimited amount.
# We recommend you leave this number high, for maximum performance.
#
MaxKeepAliveRequests 100

#
# KeepAliveTimeout: Number of seconds to wait for the next request from the
# same client on the same connection.
#
KeepAliveTimeout 5

##
## Server-Pool Size Regulation (MPM specific)
## 

# prefork MPM
# StartServers: number of server processes to start
# MinSpareServers: minimum number of server processes which are kept spare
# MaxSpareServers: maximum number of server processes which are kept spare
# MaxClients: maximum number of server processes allowed to start
# MaxRequestsPerChild: maximum number of requests a server process serves
<IfModule mpm_prefork_module>
 StartServers   8
 MinSpareServers  5
 MaxSpareServers  20 
 ServerLimit   200
 MaxClients   200
 MaxRequestsPerChild 2000
</IfModule>

If anyone can help me is welcome ;)

Greatings!