# Running into "Request rate too high 503" S3 error during snapshots

**URL:** <https://discuss.elastic.co/t/running-into-request-rate-too-high-503-s3-error-during-snapshots/382062>\
**Category:** Elasticsearch\
**Tags:** snapshot-and-restore\
**Created:** [September 18, 2025, 4:34pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/running-into-request-rate-too-high-503-s3-error-during-snapshots/382062 "2025-09-18T16:34:58Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![indu\_s](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/indu_s/32/145084_2.png) [@indu\_s](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/indu_s)\
**Post date:** [September 18, 2025, 4:34pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/running-into-request-rate-too-high-503-s3-error-during-snapshots/382062/1 "2025-09-18T16:34:58Z")

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I’m running Elastic v8.8.2 on Kubernetes and sometimes, snapshots only partially succeed with error message `AmazonS3Exception\[Please reduce your request rate. (Service: Amazon S3; Status Code: 503; Error Code: SlowDown;`. Some shards are failing due to this error - these shard files have a shared s3 prefix of \<elastic\_cluster\_name\>/\<k8s\_cluster\_name\>/indices/\<index\_hash\>.

I'm using the default settings so a upload speed of 40mb/s (so already not that fast) and 3 retries with exponential backoff ([defaults of the s3 module](https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/8.8/repository-s3.html)). Looking for advice on things I can try to address the error other than reducing the upload speed or increasing the number of retries.

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**Author:** ![Christian\_Dahlqvist](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/christian_dahlqvist/32/4617_2.png) [@Christian\_Dahlqvist](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Christian_Dahlqvist)\
**Post date:** [September 19, 2025, 7:22am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/running-into-request-rate-too-high-503-s3-error-during-snapshots/382062/2 "2025-09-19T07:22:28Z")

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What S3 storage class are you using?