Microsoft 365 Multi-Geo

Article
02/17/2023
4 minutes to read

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.