diff --git a/lib/nova b/lib/nova
index ab5a76e2ad..db7967841c 100644
--- a/lib/nova
+++ b/lib/nova
@@ -607,6 +607,8 @@ function create_nova_conf {
     iniset $NOVA_CONF DEFAULT osapi_compute_workers "$API_WORKERS"
     iniset $NOVA_CONF DEFAULT ec2_workers "$API_WORKERS"
     iniset $NOVA_CONF DEFAULT metadata_workers "$API_WORKERS"
+    # don't let the conductor get out of control now that we're using a pure python db driver
+    iniset $NOVA_CONF conductor workers "$API_WORKERS"
 
     iniset $NOVA_CONF cinder os_region_name "$REGION_NAME"
 
diff --git a/stackrc b/stackrc
index 2641be64b7..9e05d8253a 100644
--- a/stackrc
+++ b/stackrc
@@ -631,7 +631,7 @@ SERVICE_PROTOCOL=${SERVICE_PROTOCOL:-http}
 # the memory used where there are a large number of CPUs present
 # (the default number of workers for many services is the number of CPUs)
 # Also sets the minimum number of workers to 2.
-API_WORKERS=${API_WORKERS:=$(( ($(nproc)/2)<2 ? 2 : ($(nproc)/2) ))}
+API_WORKERS=${API_WORKERS:=$(( ($(nproc)/4)<2 ? 2 : ($(nproc)/4) ))}
 
 # Service startup timeout
 SERVICE_TIMEOUT=${SERVICE_TIMEOUT:-60}