As businesses progress on their digital transformation path and consolidate data from various sources within their organization, the volume of data is experiencing exponential growth. To meet the demands of modern business applications, it is crucial for data storage solutions to adapt and cater to emerging business scenarios, handle diverse data types, and assist organizations in navigating the escalating intricacies of compliance requirements. Continuous evolution of data storage solutions is essential to effectively meet the expanding business requirements of today's organizations.
If you are a Microsoft cloud based customer, such as hosting data with the Power Platform, its important to understand there is a maximum capacity for storage. Microsoft segments data across three data types which have their own capacity limits as explained below:
|
Purposes |
Database |
Stores and manages table definitions and data |
File |
Stores attachments to notes or emails in Dynamics 365 Sales, Customer Service, and Field Service applications and Power Apps. These include documents, image files, videos, PDF files and other crucial files needed in an organization. |
Log |
Records table and column data changes over time for use in analysis and reporting purposes. Log capacity is designed to help organizations meet their auditing, compliance, and governance policies. |
If you are a user with admin access, you'll likely want to see the status of your storage usage and how close you are to capacity. To do this, perform the following:
- Sign in to 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.
What happens if you go over your capacity?
Notifications will be generated when the storage capacities (database, file, or log) reach a critical level, with triggers set at less than 15% of available space. This will indicate that storage limits are approaching, and prompt necessary actions. Additionally, a warning notification will be sent when any of the storage capacities have less than 5% of space remaining, indicating a potential impact on administrative operations. The final tier of notification will be activated when the tenant exceeds their storage entitlements, placing them in an "overage" situation. This notification will alert the administrator that the following operations will be temporarily unavailable until the overage issue is resolved.
- Create a new environment (requires minimum 1GB capacity available)
- Copy an environment
- Restore an environment
- 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
An illustrative example of overcapacity
Type | Entitled | Consumed |
---|---|---|
Database | 100 GB | 95 GB |
Log | 10 GB | 20 GB |
File | 400 GB | 200 GB |
This tenant is 10 GB over in database usage. Despite having 200 GB of excess file storage, the tenant is considered to be in deficit. This tenant should free up storage or purchase more capacity.
However, if a tenant has extra space in the Database, this goes towards the maximum capacity for Log data types, but as only 5GB is remaining, they would still be in deficit.
Microsoft Dataverse default and accrued subscription capacity
Power Apps Default Capacity per tenant |
Default per user |
Default per app |
Accrued per user |
Accrued per app |
Dataverse Database capacity |
10GB |
5GB |
250MB |
50MB |
Dataverse File capacity |
20GB |
20GB |
2GB |
400MB |
Dataverse Log capacity |
2GB |
2GB |
|
|
Power Automate Default Capacity per tenant |
Default per user |
Default per flow |
Accrued per user |
Accrued per flow |
Dataverse Database capacity |
10GB |
5GB |
250MB |
50MB |
Dataverse File capacity |
20GB |
2GB |
2GB |
200MB |
Dataverse Log capacity |
2GB |
200MB |
|
The above table explains that the first user receives 10GB of database capacity, for example, and then each user added after this adds an extra 250MB of space. Therefore 4 extra users would mean a total of 11GB (10 GB + 250MB * 4).
Note, customers may have as many flows as needed with the per flow plan. Each flow will increase capacity limits.
Power Virtual Agents Default Capacity per tenant |
Default per tenant |
Dataverse Database capacity |
10GB |
Dataverse File capacity |
20GB |
Dataverse Log capacity |
2GB |
Power Pages Default Capacity |
Default entitlement per tenant |
Default entitlement per tenant |
Accrued entitlement per authenticated user capacity pack |
Accrued entitlement per anonymous user capacity pack |
Dataverse Database capacity |
5GB |
5GB |
2GB |
500MB |
Dataverse File capacity |
|
|
16GB |
4GB |
Power Apps, Power Automate, Power Virtual Agents, Power Pages and Dynamics 365 Sales, Customer Service, and Field Service applications leverage the same tenant and infrastructure. Dataverse capacity (Dataverse Database, Dataverse File, and Dataverse Log formats) is pooled across the tenant and shared amongst relevant application workloads.
There are additional Microsoft subscriptions beyond Power Platform that grant Dataverse capacity entitlements. Please see this page for details related to Project for the web, as well as the Dynamics 365 Licensing Guide for information related to other entitlements. Dataverse allows integration with Outlook and SharePoint.
Power Platform capacity add-ons
If additional subscription capacity (such as additional database or file capacity) is required, these optional add-on licenses can be added to your subscriptions. Subscription add-ons apply across the tenant and are not tied to a specific user. Subscription add-ons can be purchased at any time and remain a part of the subscription for the remainder of the subscription term.
Dataverse (Common Data Service) capacity
Apps, flows or websites utilizing Dataverse will consume varying quantities of Dataverse Database capacity, Dataverse File capacity, and Dataverse Log capacity. Additional capacity is available through the Dataverse capacity add-ons. Pricing will vary by region and plan, so we advise you to check with your Microsoft Power Platform administrator or Partner to give a quote.
Subscription Capacity/tenant |
Additional Increment |
Dataverse (Common Data Service) Database capacity |
1GB |
Dataverse (Common Data Service) File capacity |
1GB |
Dataverse (Common Data Service) Log capacity |
1GB |
What should you do if you are over capacity?
If you find your tenant using too much data, you will face challenges and hurdles that prevent you from performing actions such as copying an environment, When you navigate to the capacity page on the Power Platform administrator, it will provide analytics on which processes are using the most resource, and there are prompts on how to decrease space.
We would recommend speaking to your partner about strategies to keep you under the limit. Typically, the first step is to look at ways to reduce storage, this could be configuring audit logs or deleting hosted email attachments. If you're in a position where deleting data has a significant business impact, we would suggest evaluating which add-ons are most cost-effective. With regular notifications sent to administrators when capacity is close to the limit, this shouldn't be a big surprise and enables you to take steps before impacting your business.