Microsoft 365 Multi-Geo

Article
05/01/2023

The Microsoft 365 Multi-Geo Capabilities add-on provides Enterprise Agreement customers with the ability to expand their Microsoft 365 presence to multiple geographic regions within a single existing Microsoft 365 Tenant. Multi-Geo enables customers to manage data-at-rest locations at a granular level for their users, SharePoint sites, Microsoft 365 Groups, and Microsoft Teams teams level. Multi-Geo is targeted to customers who have a need to store data in multiple geographies to satisfy their data residency requirements.

Starting June 1, 2023, CSP partners can purchase Multi-Geo Capabilities for their customers who are using Microsoft 365, Office 365, Exchange, OneDrive and SharePoint subscriptions. With Microsoft 365 Multi-Geo, CSP partners will be able to ensure their customers meet their data residency requirements.

Microsoft 365 Multi-Geo is designed to meet your data residency requirements while retaining single-tenant administration and full-fidelity collaboration experiences between users as necessary.

If a customer requires performance optimization functionalities for Microsoft 365, see Network planning and performance tuning for Microsoft 365 or contact your support group.

Note

Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, OneDrive for Business, and Microsoft Teams are available for Multi-Geo configuration. For more information about data residency commitments, see Exchange Online, SharePoint Online and OneDrive for Business, and Microsoft Teams for more details.

For a video introduction to Microsoft 365 Multi-Geo, see SharePoint Online and OneDrive Multi-Geo to control where your data resides.

Multi-Geo architecture

In a Multi-Geo environment, your Microsoft 365 Tenant consists of a central location (where your Microsoft 365 subscription was originally provisioned) and one or more satellite locations. In a Multi-Geo enabled Tenant, the information about geo locations, groups, and user information, is mastered in Azure Active Directory (Azure AD). Because your Tenant information is mastered centrally and synchronized into each geo location, sharing and experiences involving anyone from your company contain global awareness.

Screenshot of multi-geo map from the SharePoint admin center.

Licensing

Microsoft 365 Multi-Geo is available as an add-on to the following Microsoft 365 subscription plans.

Enterprise Agreement customers must purchase a quantity of Multi-Geo licenses equal to or greater than 5% of their total eligible seats. Similarly, CSP partners must purchase and assign a quantity of Multi-Geo licenses equal to or greater than 5% of their customers' total eligible Microsoft 365 seats. For Enterprise customers, user subscription licenses must be on the same Enterprise Agreement as the Multi-Geo Services licenses. Contact your Microsoft account team for details.

Microsoft 365 F1, F3, E3, or E5
Office 365 F3, E1, E3, or E5
Exchange Online Plan 1 or Plan 2
OneDrive for Business Plan 1 or Plan 2
SharePoint Online Plan 1 or Plan 2

Note that Multi-Geo Capabilities in Microsoft 365 is a user-level add-on license. You need a license for each user that you want to host in a Satellite Geography location. You can add more licenses over time as you add users in Satellite Geography locations.

There are no Multi-Geo licenses specific to shared resources such as SharePoint Sites, Microsoft 365 Groups, or Microsoft Teams teams. If enough Multi-Geo user licenses have been acquired, then customers are eligible to use Multi-Geo with shared resources without limitation.