QUICK GUIDE TO MICROSOFT DYNAMICS 365 ONLINE STORAGE

Microsoft’s new self-service function also gives employees the ability to view their individual Dynamics 365 online storage capacity — easily and quickly. Keeping tabs on your storage capacity can help you better manage your data, alerting you when it’s time for a clean-out. The storage model was changed in April 2019 for the Common Data Service or Microsoft Dataverse as it is now called, including Dynamics 365 Online. This means all new customers since April 2019 have the new storage model applied to their account.

Data volume continues to grow exponentially, as businesses advance their digital transformation journey and bring data together across their organization. Modern business applications need to support new business scenarios, manage new data types, and help organizations with the increasing complexity of compliance mandates. To support the growing needs of today’s organizations, data storage solutions need to evolve continuously and provide the right solution to support expanding business needs.

The new storage model replaces the default tenancy capacity and is now segmented into three areas.

• Database Capacity Transactional database storage for entity definitions and record data.
• File Capacity For storing attachments on emails and notes in Dynamics 365 apps and Power Apps. This allowance can include Word documents, image files, PDF files, spreadsheets, videos and other files.
• Log Capacity Separate storage capacity for audit logs to track record and attribute data changes. This includes field value updates, security role updates, data / time of access.

Verifying your new storage model

Sign into the Power Platform admin center, and then select an environment.
Select Resources > Capacity > Summary tab.
View the data on the Summary page.
The new licensing storage model looks like the following image.

Capacity page details
Summary tab
This page provides a tenant-level view of where your organization is using storage capacity.
To view the Summary page, select Resources > Capacity > Summary tab.

All tables of Dataverse, including system tables, are included in the storage capacity reports. 

Number	Description
(1)	Storage capacity usage         File and database: The following tables store data in file and database storage: o   Attachment o   AnnotationBase o   Any custom or out-of-the-box table that has columns of datatype file or image (full size) o   Any table that is used by one or more installed Insights applications and ends in – Analytics o   WebResourceBase o   RibbonClientMetadataBase            ·  Log: The following tables are used: o   AuditBase o   PlugInTraceLogBase            · Database only: All other tables are counted for your database including the Dataverse search index
(2)	Storage capacity, by source ·        Org (tenant) default: The default capacity given at the time of sign-up ·        User licenses: Additional capacity added for every user license purchased ·        Additional storage: Any additional storage you bought ·        Total: Total storage available ·        View self-service sources
(3)	Top storage usage, by environment: The environments that consume the most capacity
(4)	Add-ons: Your organization’s add-on usage details.

The actual files such as .pdf (or any other file attachment type) are stored in file storage. However, certain attributes needed to access the files are stored in the database as well.
Dataverse tab
This page provides similar information as the Summary tab, but with an environment-level view of where your organization is using capacity.
To view the Storage capacity page, select Resources > Capacity > Dataverse tab.
Note the following features:

Feature	Description
Download	Select Download above the list of environments to download an Excel .CSV file with high-level storage information for each environment that the signed-in admin has permission to see in the Power Platform admin center.
Search	Use Search to search by the environment name and the environment type.
Details	See the next section for using the Details button () to see environment capacity analytics.
Default environment tip	The calculated storage usage in this view only displays what is above the default environment’s included capacity. Tool tips indicate how to view actual usage in the Details section.

 

Environment storage capacity details

Select the Details button() on the Summary tab view to see an environment-level detailed view of where your organization is using capacity, in addition to the three types of capacity consumption.

 

The following details are provided:

• Actual database usage
• Top database tables and their growth over time
• Actual file usage
• Top files tables and their growth over time
• Actual log usage
• Top tables and their growth over time

How Much Does Additional Storage for Dynamics 365 Cost?
Increased file storage capacity comes in the form of add-on licences, starting at $2 per month.

• Licences for additional log capacity start at $10 per month.
• Licences to increase overall data capacity start at $40 per month.

What Happens if Storage Capacity is Exceeded?

Notifications will be triggered when a tenant has less than 15% of space available across any of its three storage capacities (database, file or log). These notifications are shown in the Power Platform admin center and emailed to tenant administrators on a weekly basis.

If a tenant storage usage is in overage, the following operations will no longer be available until the exceeded capacity is resolved.

• Copy an environment
• Restore an environment
• Create a new environment (requires minimum 1GB capacity available)
• Convert a trial environment to paid (requires minimum 1GB capacity available)
• Recover an environment (requires minimum 1GB capacity available)
• Add Dataverse database to an environment