Microsoft Graph API serviceNotAvailable error when getting site by ID

Question

I am getting an HTTP 503 status MSFT Graph API error when attempting to get a Sharepoint site that was successfully created by a Post with the Graph API.

I am using a Developer O365 subscription.

A Python application using the MSFT MSAL library for managing the authentication token is being used. I am able to successfully call other parts of the Graph API with the python app. When using the Graph Explorer logged into my account and with Site permissions I get a correct successful response. The python application worked for an hour or two after about 10-40 requests, but now is frozen in error with serviceNotAvailable.

The AD Application Permissions for the python client are:

Directory.ReadWrite.All
Group.Create
Group.ReadWrite.All
Sites.FullControl.All
Sites.Manage.All
Sites.Read.All
Sites.ReadWrite.All
User.Read

The endpoint I am calling GET with is: https://graph.microsoft.com/v1.0/sites/mydomain,some-uuid

The response headers I get are:

{
'Cache-Control': 'private', 
'Content-Type': 'application/json', 
'request-id': 'ff8256de-f833-4916-85c2-2ee229a68135', 
'client-request-id': 'ff8256de-f833-4916-85c2-2ee229a68135', 
'x-ms-ags-diagnostic': '{
"ServerInfo":{
"DataCenter":"North Central US",
"Slice":"SliceC",
"Ring":"3",
"ScaleUnit":"002",
"RoleInstance":"AGSFE_IN_3"}}', 
'Strict-Transport-Security': 'max-age=31536000', 
'Date': 'Wed, 04 Mar 2020 17:47:03 GMT', 
'Content-Length': '306'
}

The response body is:

{
  "error": {
    "code": "serviceNotAvailable",
    "message": "The service is not available. Try the request again after a delay. There may be a Retry-After header.",
    "innerError": {
      "request-id": "ff8256de-f833-4916-85c2-2ee229a68135",
      "date": "2020-03-04T17:47:03"
    }
  }
}

I read in the MSFT docs that this is a throttling error for violating terms of use and that Graph Explorer is not subjected to throttling restrictions. I never get the "Retry-After" header.

Does anyone know how to get my API call to be successful? How to reset the throttling by MSFT? I might make 100 - 150 Graph API calls in an hour.

Rafa Ayadi Rafa Ayadi · Accepted Answer · 2020-03-06T09:03:34

We have been having this issue with multiple Office365 tenants. We reached out to Microsoft and they said it is a server-side bug from their side that they are fixing. They are deploying a fix for one of our customers now. This is not throttling as the error occurs from the first API call. Unfortunately, you can't do anything about it except opening a ticket to Microsoft. By the way, this call had been working fine for over a year. The error started occurring by the end of February 2020.

Microsoft Graph API serviceNotAvailable error when getting site by ID

2 Answers