nginx worker process load sharing

Question

i have nginx setup to use 4 worker processes but only one of them is handling all the requests. other 3 workers are just idle. here is the screenshot form htop

nginx.conf look like this

worker_processes  4;
events {
   worker_connections  10240;
   multi_accept on;
   use        epoll;
}
worker_rlimit_nofile    20000;
http {
   include       mime.types;
   default_type  application/octet-stream;
   sendfile        on;
   keepalive_timeout  30;
   tcp_nopush on;
   tcp_nodelay on;
   client_body_timeout 10;
   reset_timedout_connection on;
   .........

Server is a EC2 C3 Large machine with 2 CPU cores. any help would be great thanks

Answer 1

All the worker threads are not active because you haven't loaded your nginx server with sufficient amount of load. Once you put sufficient load it will be distributed across the various worker process you have created. So increase the traffic with multiple instances of client applications if you have only one client or try sending traffic from multiple clients.