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Key Protection Rate Limited

URI: https://docs.ankatech.co/errors/key-protection-rate-limited HTTP Status: 429 Too Many Requests

When you see this

Too many key-protection operations were attempted in too short a window, and the platform refused this one rather than letting the rate continue. The operation was refused before anything was written — no key material was persisted and no partial state was left behind.

The response carries a Retry-After header. This limit clears on its own.

Common Causes

  • A client retried a failing operation in a tight loop instead of backing off.
  • A batch job issued key operations without pacing them.
  • The cloud key-management service behind the deployment applied its own quota or throttle.

How to Resolve

  1. Retry after the interval given in the Retry-After header, and add exponential backoff with jitter.
  2. If a batch is driving the rate, pace it rather than retrying harder — the limit exists to keep one caller from exhausting the backend for everyone.
  3. If the rate is unexpectedly low, ask the deployment operator whether an upstream quota is the binding constraint rather than the platform's own limiter.

Do not treat a 429 as a bad request. Nothing is wrong with the request that produced it; the same request will succeed once the interval has passed. Changing the payload in response to a 429 wastes the attempt and, if it is retried immediately, extends the limit.