Right now the errors when a limit is reached looks like this: AH00161: server reached MaxRequestWorkers setting, consider raising the MaxRequestWorkers setting It would be more helpful if the messages was like this: AH00161: server reached MaxRequestWorkers=150, consider raising the MaxRequestWorkers setting Why, in this particular, case would have been more helpful than usual: MaxRequestWorkers is a new name for MaxClients and they are both supported. I was increasing MaxRequestWorkers and it would have no effect. It was because in the same configuration file, a few lines down, MaxClients was set to a low limit and it was overriding MaxRequestWorkers. If the error message would have mentioned the actual value it would have been easier to figure out the problem.