Did you know the subscription level of your Sugar Cloud instance dictates your data storage capacity? If you didn’t know, you probably haven’t hit your data limit; but you may be closer than you think! If you exceed capacity, you could be charged fees. No one likes fees.
So, let’s consider some key aspects of your Sugar storage:
- Your storage capacity based on your Sugar edition.
- Factors that affect data storage.
- Ways to decrease data usage.
- What to do if you exceed data storage.
What’s my Data Storage Allowance?
Data storage allowances are dependent on the edition of the software you have and the sandboxes you’re using. Sugar calculates the usage as a cumulative total between the sandbox and Cloud instance. They break it down in this nice little chart:
As you can see, the maximum storage allotted is 250GB with a Sugar Ultimate subscription. The chart notes that you may purchase additional storage and sandboxes, but who wants to do that?! Let’s work to better manage what we already have, right?
How do you know how much storage you’re currently using? In the Sugar Support Portal, you’ll find a “Cloud Usage Stats” dashlet that will reveal these numbers for you.
The resulting information will look something like this:
You'll know right away if you've exceeded your storage limits, because the chart will look something like this:
What Affects Storage?
As mentioned above, storage limits are cumulative between your Sugar Cloud instance, your sandboxes, and your production license. Factors affecting how much storage you’re using include:
- All your existing records
- All your existing relationships
- Emails and their attachments
- Uploaded documents/contracts
- Saved Notes
How Can I Decrease My Data Usage?
One of the first things we recommend to our customers is to reassess their Sandboxes. Are you really using ALL that data? Any unused sandbox data is wasting valuable space!
Start by reviewing the files in the upload directory or the records in database tables. Remove any data that’s not being used or is no longer relevant.
Here are a few more strategies for managing and decreasing your Sugar data usage:
Limit your file upload size.
By default, Sugar allows 32MB file uploads. An Admin can use System Settings to limit that to whatever size they deem appropriate.
Use schedulers to maintain a data removal cadence.
Automatically remove unnecessary information from your Sugar Cloud instance using the scheduler. Doing so requires certain functions be active. Sugar details the actions you can choose to implement and the schedulers you’ll need to run here.
Uninstall Uploaded Files
If you’ve uploaded any modules, customizations, connectors, or upgrade packages you no longer need, uninstall them to free more space.
Delete Older Notes with Attachments
If there's an attachment on the Note, it's using up space for the Note and for the attachment itself. Find Notes with attachments that are no longer relevant and remove them.
I Exceeded My Data Limits! Now What?!
Step 1: Breathe. If you exceed your data limits, your Sugar partner will be notified and will then notify you. However, it’s always best to manage your data usage yourself, so you avoid these kinds of surprises altogether.
If Sugar flags the overage, the resulting charge (regardless of which version of Sugar you’re currently using) is $500 per 5MB of overage annually. That can add up quickly! If you are exceeding your data limits, or believe you are close to exceeding them, make sure you:
- Contact your CRM partner ASAP
- Use the suggestions above to start purging unnecessary uploads and information
- Review your data needs and assess if adding storage is an option or necessity
If you need help with your Sugar data storage, if you have questions, or if you’d like to add to your Sugar data storage, contact us! We’re here for you.