As your Dynamics 365 data grows, you may be forced to buy additional storage or delete unneeded data. We outline the various deletion options.
Warning
Important: This blog post details methods for deleting Dynamics 365 data. It is important that due care is taken prior to performing any bulk deletion of data, as in most cases, the data will be irretrievable if deleted in error. Also, some of the methods described in this post require some degree of technical skill and also administrator privileges – please exercise caution.Table of Contents
When planning the build of a Dynamics 365 system, the immediate instinct is to store as much data as possible, just in case it may be needed in the future. This is fine in the short term, but as your system evolves over time, you may find your business approaching its storage limits. When these limits are exceeded, a number of key actions are no longer available:
- Create a new environment (requires minimum 1GB capacity available)
- Copy an environment
- Restore an environment
- Convert a trial environment to paid (requires a minimum of 1GB capacity available)
- Recover an environment (requires a minimum of 1GB capacity available)
- Add a Dataverse database to an environment
The quickest option to resolve storage issues is to purchase additional storage. However, this is only a short term fix, as data will only continue to grow and the additional monthly storage costs could prove costly. A more thorough approach is to periodically delete data that is no longer required.
How do I find out where my storage is being consumed?
By visiting the Capacity page in the Power Platform Admin Center, you will be presented with an overview of your current data storage usage.
There are three key elements to this page:
- Storage Capacity Usage. Used/Available capacity over the three areas: Database, File and Log storage. This is the total storage consumed/available across all of your Environments.
- Storage capacity by source. A number of Power Platform licences include varying amounts of additional storage. This table shows your data capacity entitlements.
- Top storage usage, by environment. This handy chart gives you an at-a-glance view of the storage being consumed by each environment. Simply hover over the coloured areas of the chart to be shown the type of storage being consumed and size in GB.
How do I analyse data usage within an environment?
By visiting the Dataverse tab of the Capacity page within the Power Platform Admin Center, you will be presented with a list of your environments, along with usage statistics.
By clicking the chart icon next to an environment, you will then be show more detailed statistics:
Once you have identified where data usage is excessive, you can decide on the appropriate deletion method.
