Microsoft 365 Multi-Geo allows an organisation to provision and store data at rest in different Geo locations in order to meet local data residency requirements and compliance rules.
Using Multi-Geo in Microsoft 365, an organisation can define the central data location for their tenant and also configure one or more satellite geos for where the data is to be stored. For example, the central data location could be set to North America with satellite locations in the UK or Europe. This works well for multi-national companies with offices around the globe who are obliged to meet country-specific data compliance and regulatory standards as well as maintaining compliance in highly regulated industries.
To view your tenant-specific data location information in your Microsoft 365 Admin Center go to Settings > Org settings > Organization Profile > Data location
What will be stored in the Multi-Geo location?
- OneDrive and OneDrive for Business uploaded files
- SharePoint Online Site data
- Exchange mailbox contents (e-mail body, calendar entries, and the content of e-mail attachments)
- Teams chat messages, including private messages, channel messages, and images used in chats.
Useful Terminology:
- Central location - the geo location where your tenant was originally provisioned.
- Geo administrator - An administrator who can administer one or more specified satellite locations.
- Geo code - a three-letter code for a given geo location.
- Geo location – A geographic location that can be used in a multi-geo tenant to host data, including Exchange mailboxes and OneDrive and SharePoint sites.
- Preferred Data Location (PDL) – A user property set by the administrator that indicates where the geo location where the users Exchange mailbox and OneDrive should be provisioned. The PDL also determines where SharePoint sites that are created by the user are provisioned.
- Satellite location – The geo locations where the geo-aware Microsoft 365 workloads (SharePoint, OneDrive, and Exchange) are enabled in a multi-geo tenant.
- Tenant – An organization's representation in Microsoft 365 which typically has one or more domains associated with it (for example, contoso.com).
ProvisionPoint now supports Multi-Geo tenants, where the Geo location of the workspace will be set using the PDL of the user making the request. Read the article
Enable Multi-Geo options to find out more.