Troubleshooting¶
This article explains common reasons for backup and recovery failures and warnings, and provides guidance on troubleshooting and resolving these issues.
How to view and check tasks with Failed or Warning status¶
If any task for a tenant finishes with a Failed or Warning status during a 7-day period, the Backup statuses chart in the Overview dashboard will display a non-zero number of failures or warnings. You can configure service reports on the Configuration → Reports tab to receive periodic emails or Slack/Teams/Google Chats notifications with licensing and protection/backup status updates for a tenant.
To find tasks affected by a failure or a warning, please go to the Activity → Tasks tab and filter tasks with Failed or Warning statuses, after that you can view details for each task by clicking on it and review the failure reason or the affected items in case of a warning.
Backup and recovery failures¶
Most common backup failures:
| Error | Reason |
|---|---|
| Quota exceeded | The Afi tenant exceeds its licensed user or storage quota.
Please go to the Licensing → Subscriptions tab to review the available quota and the current service usage or adjust the license counts according to the usage. |
Most common recovery failures:
| Error | Reason |
|---|---|
| Drive API is disabled for the account | The restore destination user doesn't have an active SharePoint license or its OneDrive service isn't provisioned.
Please check Microsoft 365 licenses assigned to the affected user or log in as the user and open its OneDrive web interface to force it to be provisioned. |
Backup and recovery warnings¶
In rare cases a backup task can finish with a warning when it fails to download one or more items (files, emails, etc.) from Microsoft 365. The common reasons why it happens are the following:
| Error | Reason |
|---|---|
| Can't download the item due to exceeded provider quota on this resource, will retry later | Generally, this warning is encountered during Contacts or Calendars backup when Exchange mailbox limits for the affected mailbox are exceeded. In particular, if there are too many contacts in the Deleted items folder for the Contacts part of the Exchange mailbox or if the mailbox size on the Microsoft 365 side exceeds its limits imposed by Microsoft 365.
Please check the problematic mailbox limits or cleanup some deleted items to unblock the backup. |
| Can't download the item due to API errors, probably it is corrupted, will retry later | The affected file can't be retrieved through Microsoft 365 API and is likely corrupted.
In this case we suggest to try opening the file via OneDrive/SharePoint web interface to check if it is accessible. If the file is accessible, you can download it from OneDrive/SharePoint, then delete the corresponding file on the Microsoft 365 side, and after that upload it back to OneDrive/SharePoint again. Alternatively, if the file can't be downloaded from Microsoft 365, you can replace the corrupted file in OneDrive/SharePoint with a correct copy from one of the previous backups. |
| OneDrive API is not available | OneDrive data for the affected user is not available, typically, when the OneDrive service for the user isn't provisioned. |
| Can't download the file marked as a malware by Microsoft 365 | The affected file is classified by Microsoft 365 as a malware and is prohibited from download via the Microsoft 365 API. |
Paused backups or restores¶
A common reason for a paused backup is Microsoft 365 API throttling during the initial data synchronization for a resource (mailbox, drive, site, team, etc.). When the Afi service detects an elevated rate of transient errors from Microsoft 365, it pauses the affected task and automatically restarts it in a few hours. Upon restarting, the task resumes from the saved state and continues the synchronization. Paused backups typically do not require manual troubleshooting, as API throttling issues are usually resolved by themselves within a few hours. After the initial data synchronization for the Microsoft 365 tenant is complete, subsequent incremental backups are expected to be fast and run without disruptions, regardless of the resource size.
In rare cases, a backup or recovery task may be paused due to an accidental, non-throttling-related error from Microsoft 365. In such instances, the task will pause in a similar manner and generally finish successfully after an automatic restart by the service. The Afi team continuously monitors paused tasks across our customer base and proactively investigates and resolves recurring issues.