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Data Residency for Microsoft Teams

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Data Residency Commitments Available

Product Terms

Required Conditions:

  1. Tenant has a sign-up country/region included in Local Region Geography, the European Union, or the United States.

Commitment:

For current language, please refer to the Privacy and Security Product Terms and view the section titled "Location of Customer Data at Rest for Core Online Services."

Advanced Data Residency add-on

Required Conditions:

  1. Tenant has a sign-up country/region included in Local Region Geography or Expanded Local Region Geography.
  2. Tenant has a valid Advanced Data Residency subscription for all users in the Tenant
  3. The Microsoft Teams subscription customer data is provisioned in Local Region Geography or Expanded Local Region Geography.

Commitment:

Refer to the ADR Commitment page to understand the specific commitments provided via Product Terms. Examples of the committed data include:

  • Chat/ channel messages and team structure: Every team in Microsoft Teams is backed by a Microsoft 365 Modern Group and its SharePoint site and Exchange mailbox. Private chats (including group chats), messages sent as part of a conversation in a channel, and the structure of teams and channels are stored in an Azure powered chat service. The data is also stored in a hidden folder in the user and group mailboxes to enable information protection features.
  • Images and Media: Media used in chats (except for Giphy GIFs which aren't stored but are a reference link to the original Giphy URL) are stored in an Azure based Media Service deployed to the same locations as the chat service.
  • Meeting Recordings: For users of Microsoft Stream (on SharePoint) Meeting Recordings are stored in the OneDrive storage of the user that initiates the recording.

Multi-Geo add-on

Required Conditions:

  1. Tenants have a valid Multi-Geo subscription that covers all users assigned to a Satellite Geography
  2. Customer must have an active Enterprise Agreement.
  3. Total purchased Multi-Geo units must be greater than 5% of the total eligible seats in the Tenant.

Commitment: Customers can assign users of Microsoft Teams to any Satellite Geography supported by Multi-Geo. The following customer data will be stored in the relevant Satellite Geography: Teams chat data that consists of chat messages, including private messages, channel messages, and images used in chats.

Multi-Geo Capabilities in Microsoft Teams

Multi-Geo capabilities in Teams enable Teams chat data to be stored at rest in a specified Macro Region Geography or Local Region Geography location. Chat data consists of chat messages, including private messages, channel messages, and images used in chats.

Teams uses the Preferred Data Location (PDL) for users and groups to determine where to store data. If the PDL isn't set or is invalid, data is stored in the tenant's Primary Provisioned Geography location.

Note

Multi-Geo capabilities in Teams rolled out in July 2021. Your chat and channel messages will be automatically migrated to the correct Macro Region Geography or Local Region Geography location over the next few quarters. Any new PDL changes will be processed after the Tenant has completed the initial sync, and new PDL changes beyond that will be queued and processed in the order they are received.

User chat

User chat includes one-to-one, one-to-many, and private meeting messages.

When a new user is created, Teams reads the user's PDL and stores all their chat data in that Macro Region Geography or Local Region Geography location. For existing users, if an administrator adds or modifies the PDL for a user, that user's chat data is added to a migration queue to be moved to the specified Macro Region Geography or Local Region Geography location.

The storage location for a one-to-one or one-to-many chat is based on the PDL of the person who created the chat. If that user's PDL is changed, the chat will be migrated to the new Macro Region Geography or Local Region Geography location. The storage location for a meeting chat is based on the PDL of the meeting organizer.

To find the current location of a user's Teams data, connect to Teams PowerShell and run the following command:

Get-MultiGeoRegion -EntityType User -EntityId <UPN>

Channel messages

Each Microsoft 365 group has a Preferred Data Location (PDL) which denotes the Geography location where related data is to be stored. Teams uses the PDL for the group associated with each team to determine where to store channel messaging data for that team. This includes private channels and chat that occurs within a channel meeting.

When a user creates a new team, that user's PDL determines what PDL is assigned to the Microsoft 365 group. The group PDL determines where that team's data is stored. If that user's PDL later changes, the group's PDL isn't changed.

For existing teams, if an administrator adds or modifies the PDL for the Microsoft 365 group that backs a team, that team's channel messaging data is added to a migration queue to be moved to the specified Macro Region Geography or Local Region Geography location.

Changing the PDL of the Microsoft 365 group queues the Teams data to migrate to the chosen Macro Region Geography or Local Region Geography location. However, this doesn't migrate the SharePoint site or files associated with the Group automatically. You must move the site separately by following the procedures in Move a SharePoint site to a different Geography location. Be sure to do both steps to avoid Teams data and SharePoint data for one group in different locations.

To find the current location of a team's data, connect to Teams PowerShell and run the following command:

Get-MultiGeoRegion -EntityType Group -EntityId <GroupObjectId>

User Experience

Teams Multi-Geo is seamless to the end user. Once you change the PDL of a user or a group, the respective data will queue for migration and the migration will occur automatically with no impact to the user or their Teams client even if they're active while the migration occurs.

Migration

Files Tab After the migration is complete the Files tab might take additional time (up to 7 seconds) to fully load when the user first attempts to use it.

Read-only period Teams chat services moves each thread individually. The thread is locked in a read-only state during the move, which lasts a few seconds per thread. Threads remain accessible during the migration.

In-scope for Migration In addition to Exchange Online, SharePoint, and OneDrive; Microsoft will migrate Teams data to the local datacenter.

  • Teams chat messages, including private messages and channel messages.
  • Teams images used in chats.

Teams files are stored in SharePoint and Teams chat files are stored in OneDrive. Voicemail, calendar, and contacts are stored in Exchange Online. In many cases, Exchange Online, SharePoint, and OneDrive are already used by the customer in the local datacenter Geography and are also part of the Microsoft 365 migration program for eligible customer countries/regions.

How can I determine customer data location?

You can find the actual data location in Tenant Admin Center. As a Tenant administrator you can find the actual data location, for committed data, by navigating to Settings > Org settings > Organization profile > Data location.