Slow web response w/ some timeouts

I'm seeing some remarkably slow web response with only one user [me].
ASG system is a VM with

1. 4 processors [very limited other uses on hypervisor]
2. 3 GB RAM
3. 0% Swap usage
4. Minimal disk usage

Processor utilization is showing 4-10% utilization which is quite high from normal standards.


Looking down in the process utilization tools I see the following: [complete listing below] Strike that... this system won't accept that much data in a post.


There are a set of defunct processes still taking up the processors time.
Is this acceptable or is something going on here that shouldn't.


USER PID %CPU %MEM VSZ RSS TTY STAT START TIME COMMAND
root 12484 2.4 1.1 50684 34284 ? S 07:29 0:10 \_ confd [worker:prpc:webadmin]
root 13557 3.2 0.0 0 0 ? Z 07:36 0:00 \_ [confd.plx] <defunct>
root 13558 3.1 0.0 0 0 ? Z 07:36 0:00 \_ [confd.plx] <defunct>
root 13559 3.6 0.0 0 0 ? Z 07:36 0:00 \_ [confd.plx] <defunct>
root 13560 3.3 0.0 0 0 ? Z 07:36 0:00 \_ [confd.plx] <defunct>
root 13563 3.8 0.0 0 0 ? Z 07:36 0:00 \_ [confd.plx] <defunct>