I have been working the past 2 weeks on mysql and apache tweaks. It really is like in the old days of video encoding for the web… a bit of luck and a lot of trial and error. The funny thing is the more I tweak (Based on tutorials and searching the web) the worse things get in terms of performance. I guess I am going to revert back to the beginning and try again. It is totally a game of balancing resources and limits and whatnot. Each setting interacts with the other and there is no “Silver Bullet” to magically increase performance. In that regard I guess it is a lot like racing. So many variables from the tires to the sparkplugs that it is impossible to follow one path to tweaking performance.