Apache is the type of application that, during its lifetime as an application, can do the same thing millions of times over and over again. The result is that apache is an ideal application for tuning. When done properly tuning is as much science as it can be though its not perfect. This imperfection is where a skilled admin can make educated guesses. This art comes from things like not knowing when someone will /. you, or how many people will actually respond to the last mass mailing that was sent out.

This standard focuses not on getting every last drop out of a host until it crashes. Instead this standard focuses on setting values to a known max utilization. Once this utilization is hit, users will start to experience timeouts and slow connects or connection refused messages. Even at this fully utilized state the box will remain responsive. This has a few key benefits over letting the box get completely consumed and exiting on its own. The first of which is that administrators can still log in and examine the box while it is fully utilized allowing them to determine if something is configured incorrectly or if the number of resources assigned to this server are incorrect (for example, it needs more memory). The second advantage is that the box stays up and does continue to serve requests. The alternative is a box completely crashing turning all users away immediately. The theory being its better to have slow responses for a while then no responses for a while. It also gives the box better odds to recover from the load spike on its own.