Demystifying the Microsoft Data Storage Licence Model

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.

New licensing storage model.

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.

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