With the upgrade to Dynamics 365, Microsoft has doubled the basic data storage included with your subscription. Previously, Dynamics CRM Online Subscriptions came with a basic 5 GB that you could use across all instances, including production instances and sandboxes. That 5 GB could be used up pretty quickly and we helped clients to maximize their storage usage in many different ways. With Dynamics 365 CRM, the default storage limit was increased to 10GB across all instances within a tenant. In addition, Organizations can add more storage to their organization in 2 ways - They can purchase additional storage from the Office 365 portal at an additional cost per month. Today that cost is $9.95 per GB per month. The second way to increase Dynamics 365 is to add additional Storage - An additional 5 GB of storage is added for every 20 full user licenses. There is no limit to additional free storage (previously this was limited to 50 GB) up to the technical limit of 5 TB.
The Data Hogs
While 10 GB of storage seems like a lot of data at first, over the years that data will be consumed, sometime way faster than might be expected. We have identified several Data hogs that should be monitored
One of these factors is Auditing. Lots of companies turn on auditing for the entire CRM instance without thinking of the ramifications of Audit Logs. If auditing is turned on for too many CRM entities, the size of the audit logs quickly become very large. If you choose to use Auditing, then plan to audit only the most relevant entities and keep an eye on those audit logs.
Another factor leading to over usage of data is Workflows - Workflows lead to several situations - An incorrectly created workflow can result in thousands of workflows in a suspended state. These suspended workflows take up lots of storage as well as slowing your CRM system down. Also logs full of completed workflows can take up lots of data that can be recovered. .
However the leading factor that causes data usage is Attachments - both email attachments and attachments to notes - While we like to encourage users to attach their relevant emails into CRM, attaching too may emails with large attachments can quickly eat up the available storage. Monitoring large attachments and
What happens when you use too much storage?
When your system consumes 80% of available storage, System Administrators will begin to receive frequent email notifications as well as nag screens when they access CRM. I have never found a way to shut these off and they do become annoying. The only cure is to reduce the storage used below 80% or purchase additional storage through the portal.
So how do I reduce my database usage?
In our next blog we will talk through several tools and strategies for minimizing and controlling data usage. In the meantime, if you have any questions on managing your storage or licensing Dynamics 365, call our sales team at 1844-264-0729. We love helping You to make the best usage of your CRM system.
