By default PHP-FPM is listening on port 9000 on 127.0.0.1. It is also possible to make PHP-FPM use a Unix socket which avoids the TCP overhead. To do this, open /etc/php-fpm.d/www.conf…
vi /etc/php-fpm.d/www.conf
and make the listen line look as follows:
[...] ;listen = 127.0.0.1:9000 listen = /tmp/php5-fpm.sock [...]
restart PHP-FPM with /etc/init.d/php-fpm restart
Next go through your nginx configuration and all your vhosts and change the line fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:9000; to fastcgi_pass unix:/tmp/php5-fpm.sock;, e.g. like this:
[...] location ~ \.php$ { root /usr/share/nginx/html; fastcgi_pass unix:/tmp/php5-fpm.sock; fastcgi_index index.php; fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name; include fastcgi_params; } [...]
Finally restart nginx: /etc/init.d/nginx restart