Microsoft 365 Multi-Geo

The Microsoft 365 Multi-Geo Capabilities add-on provides customers with the ability to expand their Microsoft 365 presence to multiple geographic regions or countries 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 customer data in multiple geographies at the same time to satisfy their data residency requirements and whose needs may change over time.

Microsoft 365 Multi-Geo is designed to meet customers' data residency requirements and allow for collaboration between and amongst the customers satellite location and preferred data locations. If 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. See the data residency commitment sections for 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 for Enterprise Agreement customers. Customers must purchase a number of Multi-Geo licenses equal to or greater than 5% of their total eligible seats. User subscription licenses must be on the same Enterprise Agreement as the Multi-Geo Services licenses. Please 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 the Multi-Geo Capabilities in Microsoft 365 plan are 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 additional 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 SharePoint Sites, Microsoft 365 Groups, and Microsoft Teams teams without limitation.

Microsoft 365 Multi-Geo availability

Microsoft 365 Multi-Geo is currently offered in these regions and countries:

Geo location Code eDiscovery data location
Macro Region Geography 2 - Asia-Pacific APC Southeast or East Asia datacenters
Australia AUS Southeast or East Asia datacenters
Brazil BRA (eDiscovery data location coming soon)
Canada CAN US datacenters
Macro Region Geography 1 - EMEA EUR Europe datacenters
France FRA Europe datacenters
Germany DEU Europe datacenters
India IND Southeast or East Asia datacenters
Japan JPN Southeast or East Asia datacenters
Korea KOR Southeast or East Asia datacenters
Macro Region Geography 3 - Americas NAM US datacenters
Norway NOR (eDiscovery data location coming soon)
Qatar QAT (eDiscovery data location coming soon)
South Africa ZAF Europe datacenters
Sweden SWE Europe datacenters
Switzerland CHE Europe datacenters
United Arab Emirates ARE Southeast or East Asia datacenters
United Kingdom GBR Europe datacenters

Getting started

Follow these steps to get started with Multi-Geo:

  1. Work with your account team to add the Multi-Geo Capabilities in Microsoft 365 service plan. They will guide you to add the number of licenses needed. Multi-Geo feature is available to Enterprise Agreement customers.

  2. Before you can start using Microsoft 365 Multi-Geo, Microsoft needs to configure your Exchange Online Tenant for Multi-Geo support. This one-time configuration process is triggered after you order the Multi-Geo Capabilities in Microsoft 365 service plan and the licenses show up in your Tenant. You will receive workload-specific notifications in the Microsoft 365 message center once your Tenant has completed the configuration process for each workload, and you then may begin configuring and using your Microsoft 365 Multi-Geo capabilities. The time required to configure a Tenant for Multi-Geo support varies from Tenant to Tenant, but most Tenants finish within a month after receipt of the feature licenses. Larger or more complex Tenants may require more time to complete the configuration process. Please contact your account team for details on your specific Tenant should you require it.

  3. Read Plan your multi-geo environment.

  4. Learn about administering a multi-geo environment and how your users will experience the environment.

  5. When you are ready to set up Microsoft 365 Multi-Geo, configure your tenant for multi-geo.

  6. Set up search.

Note

For more information on the Microsoft 365 services that support Multi-Geo please see the EXO, ODSP and Teams workload data residency pages for more details.

See also

Multi-Geo in Exchange Online and OneDrive

Multi-Geo Capabilities in OneDrive and SharePoint Online

Multi-Geo Capabilities in Exchange Online

Teams experience in a multi-geo environment