Maximize API throughput

This article describes strategies that can help you manage throttling responses for service protection application programming interface (API) limits and maximize API throughput.

If you have an application that must prioritize throughput to move the most data in the shortest period, there are some strategies that you can apply.

Let the server tell you when to retry the request

Don't try to calculate the number of requests that you should send at a time. Each environment can differ. Gradually increase the rate that you send requests at until you begin to hit limits. Then depend on the Retry-After interval value of the service protection API limit to tell you when to send more. That value will help keep your total throughput at the highest possible level.

For more information, see Retry operations.

Use multiple threads

If your individual operations are relatively quick, your application can use the higher limit on the number of concurrent threads to significantly improve performance. Depending on the nature of the data that you're processing, you might have to adjust the number of threads to achieve optimum throughput.

Distribute workloads across multiple service principals

User-based service protection API limits are implemented on a per-user basis. If your integration is using a single service principal to perform large bulk data operations, or if it's an interactive client application that uses a single service principal to send all user requests to the server, the service protection API limits can be reached fairly quickly. You can help prevent this situation by distributing the workload in smaller batches across multiple service principals.

Avoid large batches

Batching refers to the process of sending multiple operations in a single request. Most scenarios will be fastest if single requests are sent and there is a high degree of parallelism. If you think that batch size might help improve performance, the best strategy is to start with a small batch size and then increase concurrency until you start to receive service protection API limit errors that indicate that the operation must be retried. In finance and operations apps, batch size is limited to 5,000 operations.

For more information about batch requests that have finance and operations apps service endpoints, see Batch requests.

Remove the affinity cookie

When you make a connection to a service in Azure, a cookie is returned that has the response. All your subsequent requests will try to be routed to the same server, unless capacity management forces them to go to another server. If you remove the cookie, every request that you send will be routed to any of the eligible servers. Therefore, throughput increases because limits are applied per server. This strategy lets you use more servers if they are available.

Note

This strategy should be used only by applications that are trying to optimize throughput. Interactive client applications benefit from the affinity cookie, because it allows for reuse of cached data that must otherwise be re-created. Performance is affected if data must be re-created.

The following code shows how to disable cookies when you initialize an HttpClient with web services. It's assumed that you're using a custom HttpMessageHandler to manage authentication.

HttpMessageHandler messageHandler = new OAuthMessageHandler(
    config,
    new HttpClientHandler() { UseCookies = false }
    );
HttpClient httpClient = new HttpClient(messageHandler)

Optimize your connection

You can expect greater throughput if you optimize your connection. Supporting .NET sample code uses the following settings.

//Change max connections from .NET to a remote service default: 2
System.Net.ServicePointManager.DefaultConnectionLimit = 65000;
//Bump up the min threads reserved for this app to ramp connections faster - minWorkerThreads defaults to 4, minIOCP defaults to 4 
System.Threading.ThreadPool.SetMinThreads(100, 100);
//Turn off the Expect 100 to continue message - 'true' will cause the caller to wait until it round-trip confirms a connection to the server 
System.Net.ServicePointManager.Expect100Continue = false;
//Can decrease overall transmission overhead but can cause delay in data packet arrival
System.Net.ServicePointManager.UseNagleAlgorithm = false;

For more information, see Managing connections.