What is Dataverse?

Dataverse is Microsoft’s data platform, the layer that actually stores the records behind Dynamics 365 and Power Apps. When your team creates a contact, logs a call, or attaches a scan to a note in Dynamics, Dataverse is where that data lives.

What it actually means

Dataverse organizes data into tables, and it meters storage in three separately priced kinds of capacity. Database capacity holds structured records and is the expensive tier, around $40 per gigabyte per month at list for add-on capacity. File capacity holds file-type data, including note and email attachments, at roughly $2. Log capacity holds audit data. Your tenant gets a base entitlement plus an accrual per user license, and everything beyond that is purchased.

The detail worth knowing: attachments count mostly against the cheaper file tier. Older articles that price attachments at the $40 database rate are working from math Microsoft has since changed.

Why it matters

Capacity is not just a bill. When a tenant tips into overage, admins lose the ability to create, copy, or restore environments until it is resolved, and every tenant admin receives a weekly warning email. On environments that have run Dynamics for years, the tables holding attachments are usually near the top of the consumption report, which is why storage conversations so often turn out to be document conversations: the bytes filling the meter are scanned agreements and signed letters attached to notes.

Related

See how to read your own capacity report, or what it looks like to move note attachments out of Dataverse and into an archive. Related terms: annotation (CRM note), system of record, OCR.