429 Error - too many requests

Symptoms

When attempting to take a new snapshot, an error message appears indicating that the snapshot cannot be taken due to a 429 Error.

A snapshot is not taken, and a new page version is not triggered.

What is a 429 Error and what is causing it?

The 429 Error is generated by Jira when there are too many requests for data in a burst. It may also be generated by 3rd party systems, like Xray, if the Jira Snapshots macro needs to retrieve Xray data. This is a protection mechanism that is aimed to protect Jira from being flooded and from cyber attacks.

When a new snapshot is generated, Jira Snapshots communicates with Jira to retrieve the data. Sometimes it also communicates with 3rd party systems (like Xray) to get data from them. Typically- there will be multiple requests for data. The amount of requests is related to how many issues are included in the Snapshots, and how many levels are configured. For example, A single level snapshot which retrieves 100 issues, will require far less requests to Jira then a two level Snapshot with 1000 issues in the first level and another 1000 in the 2nd level.

If the amount of requests made to Jira, over a short period of time, surpasses a threshold, Jira throws a 429 error and temporarily suspends the communication channel. This is a protection mechanism against flooding and cyber attacks (This threshold is adaptable and hence cannot be predicted in advance).

In busy Jira environments, there could be other sources of communications into Jira, which are unrelated to Jira Snapshots. So there could be a situation where Jira throws a 429 Error during a snapshot operation, but that Jira Snapshots is not the sole trigger of the burst. In these situations, waiting five or ten minutes may be sufficient to be able to run a succesfull snapshot.

Solution

When receiving a 429 Error during a snapshot retrieval:

1. Start by attempting again after five or ten minutes.

2. If a 2nd attempt is not succesfull, then try to narrow down the amount of issues or the number of levels in the request. You are also encouraged to raise a support ticket with us ( support@radbee.com ). We are constantly working on refining and improving the scalability of Jira Snapshots and we want to hear about your needs in terms of size and complexity of data.