What is Office 365 Throttling and How to Prevent It?
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Throttling is essentially a mechanism that makes sure that the services offered by a server are responsive and healthy. It slows down the workload coming through the server so that it can get some breathing space. Without this, the server will become slow and unresponsive or even completely crash, causing interruptions in services for all the users. Throttling is normal and is a result of Microsoft 365 ensuring that the servers are healthy and responsive for the users. In this article, we discuss what is Office 365 throttling and how to prevent it.
Throttling When Running Migration in Office 365 Instance
It is something done to your workload to preserve the health of the servers and the service. Software as a Service (SaaS) needs to throttle its servers to prevent threats like DDoS attacks and instances where one user uses up all the capacity of the server.
End users can get throttled, which is unusual, but especially when they are doing something suspicious such as sending a lot of messages in a spam-like manner.
It is important to understand that it is applied across all layers of the Microsoft 365 stack. When you make a request, the layers at which throttling is applied are as follows:
- An individual server. If the memory, CPU, or disk resources are being overused.
- An individual SharePoint list (for example lists that have more than 5000 items may get additional throttling)
- A protocol or an API.
- An individual tenant where any single request may lead to all the requests being throttled.
Now we will learn what is Office 365 throttling and how to prevent it in detail.
How Does Throttling Work in Office 365?
In Microsoft 365, when a user requests a service, such as opening a SharePoint page or a backup tool. This request turns into an API request using one of Microsoft’s APIs. When throttling is done, the service just sits on the request for some time or indicates that the request is throttled by showing an error code. HTTP 429 error response containing a retry after the header is shown in the case of CSOM, EWS, or Graphs. This header shows the timer after which a user can request for the service again.
Microsoft is also introducing a feature that tells the requester how close they are to getting throttled precisely.
Also Read: What are Microsoft 365 Apps for Enterprise: Step-By-Step Explanation
How to Avoid Throttling in Microsoft 365?
Throttling occurs when requestors are doing something that is resource-intensive. There are mainly two scenarios where you will get throttled:
- Doing the same thing many times to different objects. Such as reading 10,000 messages at once.
- Doing the same thing many times to the same object. Such as sending thousands of messages from the same mailbox.
As an admin, you may run into these problems, but as an individual user, you shouldn’t. Here are a few suggestions to prevent this from happening:
- If you are backing up your data or migrating it, use One tool at a time.
- Do not try to migrate and take backups or restore your data to the same workload at the same time.
- Ensure that the schedule for migration is spaced out at intervals.
- Run thorough tests before performing the migration.
- Offload non-critical tasks and reduce the system load.
- Avoid resource-intensive tasks while the migration is taking place.
- Cross-check the throttling policy of the platform that you are using.
- When batches have to be created, optimize the migration that is taking place.
- Make sure that the tools you are using are in compliance with Microsoft’s best practices and use these tools intelligently.
What is the Best Tool to Prevent Throttling?
As discussed in the above points, you should use a tool that is in compliance with the best practices put up by Microsoft. You should use an automated tool called Migrator Wizard Office 365 Migration Tool.
Since increased workloads on servers lead to throttling, It may lead to interrupted migration process or even data loss. To prevent this from happening, picking a reliable tool such as the Migrator Wizard Office 365 Migration Tool that does not increase the workload on the servers is a must. It is one of the best-automated tools out there that can help you move all your files securely and with ease. It is also in compliance with Microsoft’s best practices. So the chances of getting throttled are very low. This tool has the following features:
- Transfer contacts, calendars, emails, tasks, documents, and OneDrive files.
- Office 365 shared mailbox migration between two mailboxes is supported.
- You can switch from online SharePoint to SharePoint with the tool’s assistance.
- To prioritize which accounts to migrate first, it has account-based priority migration.
- A sophisticated tool for Office 365 to Office 365 group migration.
Conclusion:
Throttling is a mechanism that ensures the health of the servers and also ensures that these servers are responsive. It slows down the workload coming through the servers to protect their health. In this article, we have explained what is Microsoft 365 throttling and how to prevent it.
The best tool to prevent throttling from taking place, save a lot of time, and have a seamless migration process is the Migrator Wizard Office 365 Migration Tool since it has huge benefits with very few downsides.