SharePoint 2013 Workflow Issue - The maximum entity size has been reached or exceeded for Topic

Question

I am having an issue when starting a workflow. I receive an error message stating:

Something went wrong. To try again, reload the page and then start the workflow

Upon investigation of the logs I discovered the following error message:

Microsoft.Workflow.Client.WorkflowQuotaExceededException: Cannot start more instances because the size of the topic has exceeded the quota limit.

I've had a look in Event Viewer and found more detailed error information:

Error processing management request. Method: POST, RequestUri: http://SERVERNAME:12291/NotificationManagement/$Notifications/?$expectedScopeRevision=0, Error: System.OperationCanceledException: The maximum entity size has been reached or exceeded for Topic: 'WORKFLOWDEFAULTNAMESPACE:TOPIC:SHAREPOINT/DEFAULT/0E64F02E-16DC-4276-B2E3-56677368A77F/1670A56B-743C-419A-803E-9627209B1438/WFTOPIC'. Size of entity in bytes:6547030977, Max entity size in bytes: 6442450944.

Microsoft.ServiceBus.Messaging.QuotaExceededException: The maximum entity size has been reached or exceeded for Topic: 'WORKFLOWDEFAULTNAMESPACE:TOPIC:SHAREPOINT/DEFAULT/0E64F02E-16DC-4276-B2E3-56677368A77F/1670A56B-743C-419A-803E-9627209B1438/WFTOPIC'. Size of entity in bytes:6547030977, Max entity size in bytes: 6442450944.

System.ServiceModel.FaultException`1[System.ServiceModel.ExceptionDetail]: The maximum entity size has been reached or exceeded for Topic: 'WORKFLOWDEFAULTNAMESPACE:TOPIC:SHAREPOINT/DEFAULT/0E64F02E-16DC-4276-B2E3-56677368A77F/1670A56B-743C-419A-803E-9627209B1438/WFTOPIC'. Size of entity in bytes:6547030977, Max entity size in bytes: 6442450944.

I have found a blog on MSDN with the same issue however they are using Azure Service Bus as opposed to Service Bus for Windows. They suggest adjusting the TTL for the topic to 2 days but I have been unable to find out how to do this or if this will even help.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

We were facing the same issue, we solved this by changing the following parameters (Power Shell). In our case, it was caused by very large workflows processing in parallel.

ServiceBusTopicSizeQuotaInBytes:

Set-WFServiceConfiguration -ServiceUri "https://workflow-service-url:12290" -Name ServiceBusTopicSizeQuotaInBytes -Value 18737418240

ServiceBusMaxTopicSizeInMegabytes:

Set-WFServiceConfiguration -ServiceUri "https://workflow-service-url:12290" -Name ServiceBusMaxTopicSizeInMegabytes -Value 30720

WorkflowServiceMaxLoadedInstances:

Set-WFServiceConfiguration -ServiceUri "https://workflow-service-url:12290" -Name WorkflowServiceMaxLoadedInstances -Value 20

After changing the parameters, you may run "Register-SPWorkflowService" again:

Register-SPWorkflowService -SPSite "http://site-url" -WorkflowHostUri "http://workflow-service-url:12291" -AllowOAuthHttp -force
$site = Get-SPSite("http://site-url")
$proxy = Get-SPWorkflowServiceApplicationProxy
$svcAddress = $proxy.GetWorkflowServiceAddress($site)
Copy-SPActivitiesToWorkflowService -WorkflowServiceAddress $svcAddress -Credential $credential -Force $true
$proxy = Get-SPWorkflowServiceApplicationProxy
$site = Get-SPSite("http://http://site-url")
$proxy.GetWorkflowServiceAddress("http://site-url")

*Finnaly, restart the services (Workflow Manager and Service Bus):

NET STOP WorkflowServiceBackend
Stop-SBFarm
Start-SBFarm
NET START WorkflowServiceBackend

• Check the current value for each parameter using "Get-WFServiceConfiguration" https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj680843%28v=azure.10%29.aspx

Regards, Tiago De Faveri