I'm hosting about 300 domains for my clients on a single Apache server. They all don't have much traffic, so the server load is not a problem.
Theoretically there should be no limit how many of such low traffic domains I can have on the server, but I'm worried that if I have too many domains on the server, the sheer list of domains to check for each incoming request will slow Apache down.
Is there a rule of thumb how long an Apache config can be and how many different domains it can handle without an issue? Are 500 ok? 5000?
Clarifying: I'm not asking about how much traffic a server can handle. I know this specific server can handle at least twice the amount of its current traffic. I want to know if the number of domains is a critical factor or not.
Best Answer
I've seen servers with literally thousands of domains running without problems. Performance does not significantly degrade just by the number of sites you're running.
It's the overall number of requests and how much CPU (and other resources like bandwidth, disk IO, database calls etc.) is required per request that influence the server's responsiveness.