Sites on Plesk loading slowly: high TTFB and CPU usage by Apache

Started by Suhitha, Jan 19, 2026, 07:24 AM

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Suhitha

Question: Sites on Plesk loading slowly: high TTFB and CPU usage by Apache


Applicable to:

  • Plesk for Linux


Symptoms

The following error message can be found in Apache error log /var/log/httpd/error_log:

[log_config:warn] [pid 5774] (32)Broken pipe: [client 203.0.113.2:43955] AH00646: Error writing to |/usr/local/psa/admin/sbin/pipelog 443, referer: http://example.com/
  • High CPU usage by Apache is displayed in Health Monitor.
  • There is no DDOS attack on the server:
  • Time to first byte / Start transfer time for websites hosted on the server is high:

# curl -s -w '\nLookup time:\t\t%{time_namelookup}\nConnect time:\t\t%{time_connect}\nSSL handshake time:\t%{time_appconnect}\nPre-Transfer time:\t%{time_pretransfer}\nRedirect time:\t\t%{time_redirect}\nTime to first byte:\t%{time_starttransfer}\n\nTotal time:\t\t%{time_total}\n' -o /dev/null http://example.com

Time to first byte: 25.204602


Cause

The enabled Piped logs feature slows down Apache performance.


Resolution

1.Log in to Plesk.

2.Disable the Piped logs feature in Tools & Settings > Apache Web Server.