NOTE: This is a Work In Progress post, published in note form for now, will revisit at later date.
steps to move apache away from mod_php and onto php-fpm
sudo yum remove php56w
sudo yum install php56w-fpm
sudo nano /etc/php-fpm.d/www.conf
listen = 127.0.0.1:9000
;listen = /run/php-fpm/www.sock
sudo nano /etc/httpd/conf.d/virtualhost.conf
# configure default php-fpm version
#SetHandler "proxy:unix:/run/php-fpm/www.sock|fcgi://localhost"
#SetHandler "proxy:unix:/run/php-fpm/www.sock"
SetHandler "proxy:fcgi://127.0.0.1:9000"
systemctl start php-fpm
systemctl enable php-fpm
apachectl configtest
systemctl restart httpd
php logs in: /var/log/php-fpm