With a limit other than “no limit”?
;; Number of persistent connections (-1 means “no limit”)
For me it seems that is opening connections for each process
I’m not a PHP expert, but I think unless you have a mechanism to maintain the connection outside each process, there will be a connection opened for each process. Also - if that process does not close the connection - it seems that it would remain open. I think there was a discussion on the Couchbase Discord about holding connections outside the PHP process.
Edit: you are already in the discussion on Discord.