Data locations for Azure Virtual Desktop

Azure Virtual Desktop resources are deployed with a deployment scope of either Geographical or Regional. With a deployment scope of Geographical, which is the default, Azure Virtual Desktop becomes a non-regional service: metadata is stored in the geography associated with the Azure region you choose, and there's no dependency on a specific Azure region.

With a deployment scope of Regional, metadata for the host pool and its related service objects is stored within the single Azure region you choose. For more information, see Azure Virtual Desktop service architecture and resilience. Learn more about Data residency in Azure and Azure geographies.

Azure Virtual Desktop stores various information for service objects, such as host pool names, application group names, workspace names, and user principal names. Data is categorized into different types, such as customer input, customer data, diagnostic data, and service-generated data. For more information about data category definitions, see How Microsoft categorizes data for online services.

Note

Microsoft doesn't control or limit the regions where you or your users can access your user and app-specific data.

Customer input data

To set up Azure Virtual Desktop, you must create host pools and other service objects. During configuration, you must enter information such as the host pool name, application group name, and so on. This information is considered customer input data. By default, with the deployment scope of geographical, Customer input data is stored in the geography associated with the Azure region the resource is created in. With a deployment scope of Regional, this information is stored within the Azure region the resource is created in, rather than across the geography associated with that region. Stored data includes all data that you input into the host pool deployment process and any data you add after deployment while making configuration changes to Azure Virtual Desktop objects, and is the same data you can access using the Azure Virtual Desktop portal, PowerShell, or Azure command-line interface (CLI). For example, you can review the available PowerShell commands to get an idea of what customer input data the Azure Virtual Desktop service stores.

Azure Resource Manager paths to service objects are considered organizational information, so data residency doesn't apply to them. Data about Azure Resource Manager paths is stored outside of the chosen geography.

Customer data

The Azure Virtual Desktop service doesn't directly store any user data or application-related data, such as user-created Word documents, databases or configuration files. However, it does store customer data, such as application names, virtual machine names and user principal names, because they're part of the resource deployment process, as described in Customer input data. This information is stored in the geography associated with the Azure region in which you created the resource. With a deployment scope of Regional, this information is stored within the Azure region the resource is created in, rather than across the geography associated with that region. For more information, see Data locations.

Diagnostic data

Diagnostic data is generated by the Azure Virtual Desktop service and is gathered whenever administrators or users interact with the service. This data is only used for troubleshooting, support, and checking the health of the service in aggregate form. For example, when a session host VM is registered to a host pool, information is generated that includes the virtual machine (VM) name, which host pool the VM belongs to, and so on. This information is stored in the geography associated with the Azure region the host pool is created in. Also, when a user connects to the service and launches a session, diagnostic information is generated that includes the user principal name, client location, client IP address, which host pool the user is connecting to, and so on. This information is sent to two different locations:

• The location closest to the user where the service infrastructure (client traces, user traces, and diagnostic data) is present.
• The location where the host pool is located.

Service-generated data

To keep Azure Virtual Desktop reliable and scalable, traffic patterns and usage are aggregated to check the health and performance of the infrastructure control plane. For example, to help us understand how to ramp up regional infrastructure capacity as service usage increases, we process service usage log data. We then review the logs for peak times and decide where to increase capacity.

Data locations

Storing customer input data and service-generated data is currently supported in the following geographies:

• Asia Pacific
• Australia (AU)
• Canada (CA)
• Europe (EU)
• India (IN)
• Japan (JP)
• Korea (KR)
• South Africa (ZA)
• United Kingdom (UK)
• United States (US)

With a deployment scope of Regional, it is supported in the following Azure regions:

US Central

• Central US

US East

• East US 2

In an Azure region that does not yet support a regional deployment scope, the Deployment scope option is not offered, and host pools are created as geographical.

In addition, service-generated data is aggregated from all locations where the service infrastructure is, and sent to the US geography. The data sent to the US includes scrubbed data. Customer data isn't aggregated.

Data storage

Stored information is encrypted at rest, and geo-redundant mirrors are maintained within the geography. Data generated by the Azure Virtual Desktop service is replicated within the Azure geography for disaster recovery purposes.

With a deployment scope of Regional, stored information is encrypted at rest and replicas are maintained across availability zones within the Azure region, with metadata replicated to a paired region (where applicable) for disaster recovery purposes.

User-created or app-related information, such as app settings and user data, resides in the Azure region you choose and isn't managed by the Azure Virtual Desktop service.