Quick Tip: Reading the Capacity Page in the Business Central Admin Center

The Capacity page in the Business Central admin center is one of those screens partners open only once something has already gone wrong. Usually a sandbox that refuses to get created. That is a shame. The page answers two separate questions at once. Reading it correctly before you hit a wall saves a support ticket later.

What the Capacity page actually shows

Total database storage used against your quota.
Usage broken down per environment.
Current versus maximum production and sandbox environments.
A link per environment into Table Information.

Storage and environment count are governed by two completely different limits. Both fail the same way when you try to create a new sandbox. No clear error, just a block. The Capacity page is the only place that tells you which one you hit.

Limit one: the number of environments

One production environment per tenant, free of extra charge.
Three sandbox environments included with it.
A hard quota, not a soft guideline.
At three sandboxes, a fourth will not be created.
Storage capacity left over does not matter here.
Raise the quota by buying an additional production environment through your CSP partner.
Each additional production environment adds three sandboxes and 4 GB of storage.
A sandbox cannot be bought on its own.

Docs:

Limit two: database storage capacity

80 GB shared storage quota by default.
Plus an allowance per licensed Essentials or Premium user.
Shared across every environment in the tenant.
Not allocated per environment.
Go over it and environment creation gets blocked too.
This applies even under the three sandbox limit.
Existing environments keep working fine either way.
Only environment creation, restore, and copy are affected.

Docs:

Managing capacity

Drill into Table Information

Open Table Information through Tell Me, inside the environment.
Lists every system and business table.
Shows record count, average record size, and total size.
Includes indexes in the total.
Fastest way to see which tables eat your capacity.
No SQL access required.
Use Open in Excel to compare environments or share the numbers.

Docs:

View table information

Clean up with the Data Administration Guide

Table Information tells you where the space is going. It will not clean anything up for you. Open Data Administration through Tell Me, then run the Data Administration Guide. It walks through three areas. Each one skippable if it does not apply.

Data cleanup removes history data with no ongoing value.
Mostly log style tables, safe to delete.
Unused companies removes demo and old test companies.
Also removes companies for entities that no longer exist.
Easy to forget, and easy to quietly hold onto capacity for years.
Date compression summarises old ledger entries into fewer records.
You choose the entry types, the period, and which dimensions to retain.
Only data older than five years can be compressed this way.
Anything more recent requires your Microsoft partner.
The guide can also remove empty registers from earlier compression runs.
Each step also exists as its own page outside the wizard.

Docs:

Automate it with retention policies

The automated version of the cleanup step.
Define one policy per table.
Set how long to keep records before automatic deletion.
Runs on a schedule, no manual work needed.
Meant for log style and archive style tables.
Job queue log entries and change log entries, for example.
Not meant for core transactional data.
Set it up once for your noisiest tables and forget about it.

Docs:

Clean up data with retention policies

Move document attachments outside the database entirely

For a lot of Business Central installations, attachments drive database growth more than transactional entries. The better answer is not to store the files in the database in the first place.

As of BC28, external file storage is supported for document attachments.
SharePoint, Azure Blob Storage, or Azure Files.
Configure an account on the External File Accounts page.
Assign the Document Attachments scenario to that account.
Attached files then sync out to the external location.
No longer written as Media data inside Business Central.
Nothing changes for end users in how they attach or open files.
The bytes are simply no longer in your 80 GB pool.
Backup and access control on the external storage are your responsibility.
Microsoft does not manage those files.
Set this up early, not once you are near your quota.
Attachments on invoicing, purchasing, and project documents grow quietly.

Docs:

If it is the environment count, not storage

Cleaning up data will not help here. Delete an existing sandbox you no longer need, or buy an additional production environment. That unlocks three more sandboxes. This is a licensing conversation, not a technical one.

What to actually do

Read the Capacity page first, always.
- One place tells you what you are blocked on.
If it is storage
- Start with retention policies on log style tables.
- Then remove unused companies.
- Then date compression on old ledger entries.
- Then external storage for attachments.
Set retention policies and external storage up once.
- They keep working for you after that.
If it is the environment count
- then delete a sandbox
- or buy a new production environment.
Managing multiple customer tenants?
- Check Capacity on a regular cadence.
Keep retention policies and external storage in place ahead of time.