As a result of this, the process size will grow, consuming additional memory each time you soft restart the server in this way. The commands apachectl restart and apachectl graceful attempt a soft or graceful restart, so both run into this problem. Resolving pathnames can require a significant amount of time. For best performace, you may choose to mount a fast disk on the document root directory. Disable any server features that you are not using Avoid loading any modules that you don't need and disable any features which don't apply to your server usage.
Loaded modules require additional memory.
If you need to maximize the performance of your Apache Web server, you may want to compile a version which sets compile-time settings to meet your needs. See the Apache documentation for more information on compiling your own server and suggestions on maximizing performace at compile time. The official Apache distribution is available from The Apache Group , although the port to Mac OS X Server may not yet be integrated into the official distribution. Apache may fail to operate as documented on case-insensitive filesystems. For example, access control checks may fail and compromise the security of your server.