Dynamics storage demands doubled in 3 weeks?

Dynamics storage demands doubled in 3 weeks?
Gretchen Garcia
Gretchen GarciaOct 12, 2022 01:12 PM
Last month, we learned that we needed to purchase a storage plan. (Our licenses changed and this was …
1. Dynamics storage demands doubled in 3 weeks?

TOP CONTRIBUTOR
Gretchen Garcia
Posted Oct 12, 2022 01:12 PM
Last month, we learned that we needed to purchase a storage plan. (Our licenses changed and this was part of it but we didn’t know it.) So we purchased storage based on where stuff was in September.

Yesterday I get an alert that we’re out of space again. I go look and now it’s doubled in just 3 weeks. Only about 10 people have access to write records and there are only 50 accounts with attachments. (All totalling under 100mb or so based on the sandbox. It’s all small stuff like pdfs or word docs.)

We don’t have Exchange – we’re using imap with Gmail but even then – it’s only outbound messaging once in a blue moon. (So there’s no emails & attachments there.)

I changed logs to only store for 6 mos (vs indefinite) and deleted some old import files / jobs as suggested on a MS article that I found but that didn’t really work either. Free up storage space – Power Platform

Microsoft remove preview
Free up storage space – Power Platform
These are ways to reduce the amount of storage space used by removing or deleting different types of information from customer engagement apps (Dynamics 365 Sales, Dynamics 365 Customer Service, Dynamics 365 Field Service, Dynamics 365 Marketing, and Dynamics 365 Project Service Automation). Use one or more of these methods to control your total data storage usage.
View this on Microsoft >

What am I missing? Where did all of this data come from? It’s not as if this instance is big but it went from just under 2gb to 5 (database) and from 5 to 10gb on the file size. Literally in 3 weeks from when the CIO posted the purchase was complete… I don’t want to go and ask for more storage only for it to reproduce again like a herd of bunnies.

Thanks for any articles / insights you might have on this…

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Gretchen Garcia
Systems Administrator
Denver Public Library
Denver CO
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2. RE: Dynamics storage demands doubled in 3 weeks?

TOP CONTRIBUTOR
Donal McCarthy
Posted Oct 13, 2022 02:44 AM
You should be able to see where the increases came from by clicking the little graph beside the environment instance.
In there, you will see your top tables their usage for the last month.

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Donal McCarthy
BrightWork 365 Solution Architect
BrightWork
Galway
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3. RE: Dynamics storage demands doubled in 3 weeks?

TOP CONTRIBUTOR
Gretchen Garcia
Posted Oct 14, 2022 06:28 PM | view attached (0)
Thank you Donal for sharing that I can get deeper details with that icon! (Apparently I found that last month but forgot about that as it was a new thing to explore.) Seeing that – I can see that in production, our space actually went down. (Not by much – but clearly my deleting of some logs / import files did help.)

If all of the graph data points – nothing is going up by much. It’s all pretty flat. (First image is from September, 2nd is current.) The sandbox is very similar but with a reduction as I have been trying to delete stuff to figure out what is going on.

So now the question I have is this – since the space is literally the same as last month, do I have to buy enough storage for both production AND the sandbox? (From what I can find – it seems like I do have to pay for that storage… I didn’t think the sandbox counted against our storage?) If this is the case – then I am super confused as to why it was happy when we got the initial storage and then later decided “sorry buddy – you need to buy more.”

What do folks do for this? Pay for enough storage for both environments? Nuke the sandbox data when not in use and spin it up on the fly? (on the fly being a few hours to copy prod down to sandbox?) What’s happening to our environment as a whole as it’s being grumpy about storage? (Are we in danger of losing data?)

CRM space usage September

CRM space usage September

To answer your question Cole, yes I believe so. The community engagement set of licenses we had for about 10 of our users was cut short and we had to switch them over. (they are currently using the same sales team licenses as everyone else and I added the stuff they use most from the Non-profit accelerator into that app to get them rolling for now.) This all appears to have happened around the same time. We’re still trying to figure out what licenses to get for those users through our govt reseller….

Keeping track of all of this stuff can be a full time job. 😛 One I do not have the luxury of doing with all the other things I have to keep running.

Thank you all for your insight into things – we’re small potatoes in the realm of Dynamics and I know enough to get things going for our staff but can’t keep track of everything or come close to the skills that I see so many of you exhibit in your systems & stories.

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Gretchen Garcia
Systems Administrator
Denver Public Library
Denver CO
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4. RE: Dynamics storage demands doubled in 3 weeks?

TOP CONTRIBUTOR
Donal McCarthy
Posted Oct 17, 2022 05:16 AM
Edited by Donal McCarthy Oct 17, 2022 05:18 AM
Hi Gretchen,

Yes, you have to pay for Sandbox storage.

Every environment that you create takes up 1Gb of database.

The typical base accrual is 10Gb of database and 20Gb of File Storage.

Your numbers look very small, e.g. you only have 1.5 Gb of actual data, and it’s all system stuff, which you can’t really remove.

How many environments do you have?

Donal

5. RE: Dynamics storage demands doubled in 3 weeks?

Cole Haddock
Posted Oct 13, 2022 09:07 AM
Gretchen, you moved form CE lic over to the dedicated first part app lic correct?

The space count is based on all env in your tenant (o365) so it’s not just your production env.

Reach out and we can take a look at what more you can do as it will be diff for each organization.

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Cole Haddock
CRM Architect
ace.haddock@gmail.com
Nashville, TN
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6. RE: Dynamics storage demands doubled in 3 weeks?

SILVER CONTRIBUTOR
Nataliya Tsyplakova
Posted Oct 13, 2022 09:19 AM
Hi Gretchen,

Did you check the Power Platform Admin Center? Under Resources tab, click Capacity, you will get all information you need, like when the spike happened and for which tables.

Thanks,
Nataliya

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Nataliya Tsyplakova
World Vision Canada
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