The log rotation issues have been resolved.  Fail2ban is no longer grinding on huge logs and making the server slow.  In addition, I’ve implemented file system caching so that local copies of frequently used files are kept on local disk negating the need to fetch them via NFS.  I’ve also recompiled the server using maximum optimization and made other optimizations.

     The result of these things is that it’s cut the time it takes to load our main page (which has some PHP and database lookups) from around 800ms to about 250ms, a notable improvement.

     However, I have one customer who has a site that loads a small number of images and those images are still taking from 5 seconds to 15 seconds to load.  I have a games page here that loads several hundred tiles that are actually larger than the images on his site and they all load in under 100ms.

     The only difference I can see between his code and mine is that he is using JavaScript to load, I am just using the img tag.  There is also a very odd thing in that the delay in loading images on his site is always an even multiple of 5 seconds, always.

     We recently upgraded to 2.4.12, the latest version of Apache.  I am wondering if anyone else is seeing any issues on their site. If so, please let me know, seeing what is common might help me diagnose and resolve this problem.