php-fpm dynamic is lying to you on a small box

php-fpm dynamic is lying to you on a small box

Default pm = dynamic spawns and kills workers constantly, and each PHP worker eats 30-50MB. On a 2GB VPS that thrashing is your slowdown. Switch to static and do the math yourself:

— pm = static
— pm.max_children = 12 (12 × 40MB = 480MB, leave room for nginx+MySQL)

No spawn overhead, predictable memory, no OOM-killer surprises at 2am. Handles 8k visits/day on a $6 box without breaking a sweat. Try it tonight.