Managing Storage Space in Microsoft Dynamics CRM

One of the frequent topics sent to our CRM support team is a request for help in managing the ever-growing storage requirements for Microsoft Dynamics CRM data. Here are some simple steps to help with this ongoing maintenance task for your CRM system.  In a recent blog, our author CRMGuru reviewed 5 ways to manage storage for CRM online systems.

In this article, I’m going to take a deeper look into ways to proactively manage storage usage and future needs for both CRM online and CRM On-premise.

-For CRM On Premise, every month, check the size of your CRM database – this will help with tracking growth over time and allow for planning for additional storage for both databases and SQL backups.

-For CRM Online, each month, open a ticket through your O365 portal to request a report of “Top 10 Tables by Usage” for your organization .  This will allow for tracking of table growth, and planning for either acquiring more storage space or directing your effort toward entities on which you can focus your clean-up efforts.

-Both online and on-premise need to manage storage because increased database size on either platform leads to increased cost for storage whether for more storage space in the cloud, or more physical drive space on premise.

Below are several possible methods to reduce storage usage in both CRM online and on premise. These are from the TechNet knowledge base for CRM 2015, but can be applied to all versions.

Option 1: Remove bulk email and old workflow instances through a bulk deletion job.

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn683569%28v=crm.7%29.aspx#BKMK_Method1

Option 2: Review and remove suspended workflows, if they are more than a few days old. Note any errors found on the suspended jobs,  to use for review of workflow steps.

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn683569%28v=crm.7%29.aspx#BKMK_Method2

Option 3: Use an Advanced Find to identify and remove old email attachments. (Note there may be options for extracting out the attachments to another storage location instead of simply deleting them.)

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn683569%28v=crm.7%29.aspx#BKMK_Method3

Option 4: Use a bulk deletion job to remove email messages with attachments.

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn683569%28v=crm.7%29.aspx#BKMK_Method4

Option 5: Remove notes with attachments using Advanced Find.

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn683569%28v=crm.7%29.aspx#BKMK_Method5

Option 6: Remove notes with attachments using a bulk deletion job.

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn683569%28v=crm.7%29.aspx#BKMK_Method6

Option 7: Remove bulk duplicate detection jobs and associated copies of duplicate records.

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn683569%28v=crm.7%29.aspx#BKMK_Method7

Option 8: Delete bulk import instances using a bulk deletion job.

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn683569%28v=crm.7%29.aspx#BKMK_Method8

Option 9: Delete bulk deletion jobs instances using a bulk deletion job.

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn683569%28v=crm.7%29.aspx#BKMK_Method9

Option 10: Delete audit logs.

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn683569%28v=crm.7%29.aspx#BKMK_Method10

Full TechNet article is here:

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn683569.aspx

For assistance in managing your Microsoft Dynamics CRM storage, please contact Beringer, a Microsoft Gold Certified Parnter.

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