Hosting all of your ERP data in the cloud can get really expensive, really fast.
In recent months Infor has begun reaching out to CloudSuite customers about their total Data Processing Volume (DPV) usage and how it compares to their maximum storage entitlement included in their current subscription.
If you haven’t heard from them yet, now is a good time to review your data storage entitlement and how much of it you’re using.
In this post we’ll talk about the context behind these recent notifications, how organizations can limit their data needs before moving to the cloud, and identify some levers you can pull post-live to optimize your storage needs.
Let’s get into it.
Cloud ERP Storage is Not Infinite
The context behind the recent notices is to let customers know that they have exceeded or are about to exceed their CloudSuite subscription entitlement for DPV.
DPV is Infor’s standard measure to track the cumulative volume of data processed across your enterprise applications, and it covers more than raw storage: it reflects the data processing, application processing, security, and infrastructure required to support your environment. The storage behind it, the tier backing relational databases and live application data, is the most expensive in the stack.
Data accumulates, and usage tends to creep past entitlements over time. And when it does, you have three paths forward:
- Optimize your data to bring volume back within your entitlement
- Right-size your entitlement to match what your business genuinely needs to keep, or
- A combination of one and two
The reality is that most organizations land on path three. It’s not uncommon to underestimate how much data you need accessible, and on the other hand, there are a number of places to easily trim historical data. One of the goals of this post is to help you identify the low-hanging fruit data optimization areas so you don’t have to increase your data entitlement.
There are two great times to take control of your data footprint: before you migrate and after you go live.
Bring Only the Data You Need
The natural instinct heading into a CloudSuite migration is to bring everything. Every fiscal year, every record, every attachment—this we know.
Fact is, this approach is expensive for a couple of reasons. First, it adds considerable time to the length of the project, and second, it increases the amount of storage you will need to pay for on CloudSuite. All of that history lands in premium storage the moment it arrives, and bloated data sets stretch out your Data Migration Factory cycles too.
And if you’re moving from single-tenant cloud to multi-tenant CloudSuite, the storage in your old single-tenant environment counts toward your account total right alongside the new one. During the migration, the same data gets counted twice!
With this background, the best approach leading up to a migration is to sort your data by how often you actually need to reference it. Records your team pulls up regularly belong in CloudSuite. But data you review once a year? That can be stored somewhere cheaper.
And a cheaper place exists. For Lawson S3 clients, Infor offers a data archiving option that moves older data directly into the Infor Data Lake, which runs on far less expensive storage. Do this during your implementation, and you arrive at day one with a lean environment instead of untangling a mess afterward.
Plus, archived data stays within reach. Data objects in the lake carry names that mirror the Lawson S3 table names, and you can query them through Birst dashboards and reports whenever you need to look something up.
How far back should you go? As we covered in our guide to navigating the post go-live phase, the general rule of thumb for audit records is a rolling seven-year limit. Anything older moves to the archive.
After Go-Live, Run a Data Optimization Audit
Once you’ve reached the cloud, storage management must become an ongoing discipline. There are a handful of places to visit first to see if there are some easy places to cut back on DPV. Here’s where to start and the easiest levers to pull.
1. Review Your DPV Usage Report in Infor Concierge
Before cutting anything, see where your storage actually goes. Log into Infor Concierge, open the usage report, and select data processing volume. You’ll see your total storage capacity along with a breakdown of every category consuming it: document management, Landmark applications, business intelligence, and more.
That breakdown is your roadmap. A category taking a surprisingly large amount of your limited data capacity is definitely worth investigating. One note: this report covers multi-tenant environments only. If you’re still on single-tenant, you’ll need to work with Infor directly to size your usage.
2. Trim Your Non-Production Tenants
After reviewing your usage report, it’s time to assess your various tenants. Alongside your production tenant (PRD), you’re likely running a testing tenant (TST) and a training tenant (TRN). Copying your full production data set into each one is a needless way to triple your footprint—and it’s completely avoidable
The reason is that your testers and trainees don’t need seven years of history to do their jobs. A subset covering the current and prior year usually handles testing and training scenarios just fine, at a third of the storage cost. So, think about what information is necessary in those tenants and cut the rest. This is an easy win.
3. Shorten the Life of Audit Logs & History Tables
CloudSuite keeps audit logs and history tables for its business classes, and you can adjust the retainage time frame on them. Most organizations don’t know to visit these settings and the default creates the perfect environment for storing an excess amount of metadata.
While important, this data rarely needs to live as long as the transactions it describes. A retention policy that expires audit and history data on a shorter clock than your transactional data frees up real space with virtually no operational downside. Check the allotted time set for maintaining these types of files—it could be the solution to your DPV challenges!
4. Put A Retention Policy on Documents & Attachments
Infor Document management (IDM) is a great tool for managing your correspondence, and if you’re taking advantage of the solution, you’ll notice that its portion of your allocated DPV will grow quickly. Invoice images, supporting documents, and attachments pile up with every transaction, year after year.
So, ask yourself the hard question: how long does an invoice image actually earn its place in premium storage? Set a retention approach for IDM content and archive anything that falls outside of it.
Keep It Going with Built-In Archive & Purge
In addition to the quick wins mentioned above, older transactional records are another area worth exploring. Closed orders, invoices, and postings past their active-use period can move to lower-cost storage rather than sitting in premium capacity or getting deleted outright.
CloudSuite modules include archive and purge functionality built for exactly this. A common pattern: each time you close a fiscal year, move your archive cutoff date forward one year. Users keep a rolling seven years visible in the application while older data shifts to cheaper archival storage.
And it’s reversible. Change the cutoff date back, and the archived data returns to the active environment. You get the flexibility without paying premium rates to keep everything live.
One rule before you remove anything: confirm your retention and compliance requirements first. Archiving is reversible. Purging is not. Only remove what you’re certain is safe to lose.
Optimizing Infor CloudSuite Data Storage
Increasing your DPV entitlement is an option, and for some organizations it’s the right call. But it’s always wise to start by first assessing your data footprint and optimizing where you can. Review your usage report, right-size your non-production tenants, trim your audit and document retention, and archive aggressively before you migrate.
None of this is complicated. It’s simply deciding, deliberately, how much data deserves a seat in the most expensive storage you’re paying for.
You don’t have to figure it out alone, either. RPI helps organizations at every stage of this cycle. If a migration is ahead of you, we’ll help you determine what belongs in CloudSuite and archive the rest before day one.
If you’re already live, we’ll walk through the data optimization review with you and identify where your quickest savings are hiding. And once the low-hanging fruit is picked, we’ll help you stand up recurring archive, purge, and retention processes so your business only ever pays for the data storage it absolutely needs.
Ready to find out how much storage you actually need? Contact us below to schedule a data storage review with our team, and we’ll help you map your quickest path back within your entitlement.
