Monitoring storage

Salesforce has three types of storage:

• File storage: This includes file storage types, such as chatter files, CRM content, documents, and attachments
• Data storage: This includes data records on the CRM, such as accounts, contacts and any other standard object, and all custom objects
• Big object storage: This is a particular set of Salesforce objects that are meant to refer to very large datasets (billions of records) and are especially intended for archival purposes

To access the complete limits for an in-depth analysis, click on Setup | Data | Storage Usage:

We are granted a base of 10 GB of data storage for the contact manager, group, essentials, professional, enterprise, performance, and unlimited editions (while developer organizations are tied to 5 MB) that can be incrementally increased by contacting Salesforce support (by purchasing more storage or more licenses).

The organization starts with 10 GB of file storage space for the contact manager, group, professional, enterprise, performance, and unlimited editions, while the essentials edition is allocated 1 GB of space. We can get more file storage by purchasing more storage or by acquiring additional user licenses.

The Percent column of data or file storage in the previous table is not related to the actual percentage of storage used, but only to the percentage of storage used by that item in the overall count. What does this mean? In the previous screenshot, the Photos percent of 100% doesn't mean that the photos are consuming all 20 MB of available file storage, but rather they are consuming 100% of all the consumed file storage (in this example, the photos' percentage has been approximated to 100% because the other items that are consuming the file storage—the content bodies—consume less than 1% of actual storage).

This page also shows the top owners of the records (this allows you to monitor data skew; refer to the previous chapter to refresh your memory of what data skew is):