To get the best performace from Embperl, it is necessary to restrict logging to a minimum. You can drastically slow down Embperl if you enable all logging options. (This is why `make test' takes a while to run.) You should never enable dbgFlushOutput or dbgFlushLog in a production environment. More debugging options are useful for development where it doesn't matter if the request takes a little bit longer, but on a heavily-loaded server they should be disabled. Additionally the options optDisableChdir, optDisableHtmlScan, optDisableCleanup have consequences for the performance.

Also take a look at mod_perl_tuning.pod for general ideas about performance.