What limits cause the QuotaExceededException in Azure Notification Hubs

Chris Lamont 11

I am looking for documentation on an exception I got with Azure Notification Hub. I get the "QuotaExceededException" when requesting the "GetInstallationAsync" endpoint multiple times.

There does not seem to be any documentation and there is a lot of conflicting information on Stack Overflow. Can you direct me to some official documentation or provide an outline of the limitations

I am calling this method about 100 times:
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/api/microsoft.azure.notificationhubs.notificationhubclient.getinstallationasync?view=azure-dotnet

Which then throws this exception:
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/api/microsoft.azure.notificationhubs.messaging.quotaexceededexception?view=azure-dotnet

There is a similar SO question here but it was 5 years ago:
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/28484046/getting-quotaexceededexception-what-are-the-operation-quota-limitations-for-az

In this thread, I think someone from Microsoft answered:
"For my best knowledge for right now NH has following limitations on number of SENDS (not registrations) per namespace per minute per NH machine:
Free tire: 100 Basic tire: 900 Standard tire: 11500"

This is the only information I can really find about the limitations.

fwiw, I am using the Basic ANH plan.

ajkuma 22,526 Reputation points Microsoft Employee

2020-09-16T12:14:40.523+00:00

@Chris Lamont , Thanks for posting this question and sharing your feedback on the documentation; to capture exceptions (Quota) causes and tier limits. This is a great feedback, I have reached out our product engineering and content team and relayed the feedback.

Just to confirm, what is the complete error message?

I understand you figured the issue could mitigated by scaling-up to higher tier from the error message ‘QuotaExceededException’ and discussion threads. As mentioned on the pricing page “Notification Hubs is offered in three tiers—free, basic and standard. Base charge and quotas are applied at the namespace level. Pushes exceeding included amounts are aggregated at the subscription level for each tier.”

Checkout the quota limits on Pricing page (up-to-date info):
ajkuma 22,526 Reputation points Microsoft Employee

2020-09-16T12:19:38.337+00:00

Doc -Notification Hubs limits

Just sharing the following for additional information, you could leverage the diagnostic option from Azure Portal> navigate to your Notification Hub> In the left navigation, click on Diagnose and solve problems – Checkout the “Errors and Exceptions” tile.
-You would see with recommended guide, is step to upgrade to Standard tier, which will increase your quotas.

-Also, the "GET installations" request can increase over the months and reach the throttling tipping point. You could add some backoff logic to "GET installations" requests, so that they wait 60+ seconds before trying the request again if they are throttled.
Chris Lamont 11 Reputation points

2020-09-21T07:09:30.417+00:00

@ajkuma Thanks for the information and sorry for the delayed response.

With all the added information I still don't really get an idea of what the Quota is for the different tiers. You mentioned maybe upgrade to the next tier, but I still don't really know what the quota is for that tier either.

"You could add some backoff logic to "GET installations" requests..."

That is possible but I still don't know what the limits are to implement the backoff logic.

Background: I am moving from App Center push which has been retired. I wanted to check if the user had an ANH installation, which would determine if I should use AppCenter or ANH to send the notification so to not waste resources pushing to both. However I have changed some logic to mitigate this so it is not needed for me to call the GET installations.

The original question is still important to know; what are the quotas for calling the API?
ajkuma 22,526 Reputation points Microsoft Employee

2020-09-22T22:00:46.403+00:00

Reached out to Chris offline, will update here with more findings.

@Chris Lamont , Just to add some clarity on this, regardless of tier, the limit for “GetInstallationAsync” is 60 calls/minute per namespace. You could store the installation state locally. Changes to installations can then be made via update and patch operations.
ajkuma 22,526 Reputation points Microsoft Employee

2020-09-24T12:00:01.59+00:00

Updating the thread based on our offline discussion.

Regardless of tier, the limit for “GetInstallationAsync” is 60 calls/minute per namespace. You could store the installation state locally. Changes to installations can then be made via update and patch operations.

Given the context of migrating from App Center Push to ANH, the recommendation is to use the new Android/Apple SDKs. The new SDKs will store current installation information on the client device and create/update the server whenever there’s a change, thus avoiding the need to make GET Installation calls.

Chris performed refactoring and extending a table to avoid throttling issues.

1 answer

ajkuma 22,526 Reputation points Microsoft Employee

2020-10-16T16:20:18.733+00:00

To benefit the community, posting the answer here:

Regardless of tier, the limit for “GetInstallationAsync” is 60 calls/minute per namespace. You could store the installation state locally. Changes to installations can then be made via update and patch operations.

Given the context of migrating from App Center Push to ANH, the recommendation is to use the new Android/Apple SDKs. The new SDKs will store current installation information on the client device and create/update the server whenever there’s a change, thus avoiding the need to make GET Installation calls.

Chris performed refactoring and extending a table to avoid throttling issues.

Thanks Chris for the co-operation!
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KHATRI, Kalpesh Kumar 0 Reputation points

2023-06-01T22:38:29.4166667+00:00

I have a similar issue. We have an existing implementation that is using Registration Management From a Backend as described in this article

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/notification-hubs/notification-hubs-push-notification-registration-management#registration-management-from-a-backend

We need to manage the installation and tags associated with an installation from the Backend and not from a client device.

We are on the standard tier that permits 10M active devices. Our client app is now installed on more devices and thus we need to make more calls to GetInstallationAsync and CreateOrUpdateInstallationAsync.

If these APIs have a rate limit of 60 calls/minute/namespace, how can these API be used to practically/efficiently manage up to 10M devices! Is there a way to request an increased rate limit?

KHATRI, Kalpesh Kumar 0 Reputation points

2023-10-08T21:29:12.1033333+00:00

Following the guidance at https://github.com/Azure/azure-notificationhubs-dotnet,

we refactored our code to utilize PatchInstallationAsync and that resolved the QuotaExceededException in Azure Notification Hubb

ajkuma 22,526 Reputation points Microsoft Employee

2023-10-10T08:07:10.73+00:00

Thanks for the follow-up and sharing the solution that worked for you.
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