Ryan Adams

Ryan Adams

Senior Technical Specialist

You may be concerned about the data residency of your information; in this piece I explore where Microsoft stores your Office 365 data.
 

Microsoft's UK Data Centres

When registering your Microsoft 365 tenant, Microsoft will place your tenant within the appropriate Geolocation based on the usage address that you are using during the registration. Various services from Microsoft use different physical locations but these will typically be grouped under one Geolocation – which for us is “United Kingdom”.

 

Data centres for the UK are in Durham, London, and Cardiff.  Specifically, Microsoft 365 services sit as follows, note that data sits across two data centres for redundancy:

Feature Tool Description
Exchange Online Protection  
OneDrive for Business  
SharePoint Online  
Microsoft Teams  
Office Online & Mobile    
Skype for Business*  
Microsoft Teams  
MyAnalytics  
Microsoft Stream  
OneNote Services  
Azure Active Directory  
Microsoft Planner  
Yammer  
Microsoft Whiteboard  
Microsoft Forms  
Microsoft Sway    

 

*Tenants with 500 users or less will be onboarded with Microsoft Teams and will not have access to Skype for Business.

 

**We have expanded on Azure Active Directory and the services delivered by Azure Active Directory below.

 

Understanding where your data is stored is important for Office 365 users. Here is an overview of the locations of two Microsoft services:

Yammer

Acquired by Microsoft in 2009 for $1bn, Yammer's data was initially stored in the USA and later on AWS. However, it now resides in Microsoft's European data centres.

Microsoft Sway

Data created in Sway, which launched in 2015, is located exclusively in Microsoft's US data centres. However, with Sway's iOS app being retired and increased functionality in PowerPoint, it might not be around for the long term.

How do I ensure my tenant is in a particular location?

To ensure your tenant's location, choose your location in the 'Usage Location' field during the Microsoft 365 sign-up process. You can check your data's current location in the Microsoft 365 Admin Center under 'Data Location'.

Unfortunately, Microsoft does not offer a service to move your tenant's location between geographies. To conduct this, you must perform a manual migration exercise.

How do I know where my data currently sits?

Within the Microsoft 365 Admin Centre, click on your organisational name and the information is located towards the bottom of the page under “Data Location”.

Azure-Region-MapExplore Microsoft's global data centre locations in their 3D globe map available here.

Can I move the location of my Microsoft tenant?

We speak to customers who wish to move their tenants between geographies, either through corporate re-structuring, or that the tenant was originally set up in the wrong location. 

 

Unfortunately, this is not a service offered by Microsoft, and the only way to do this is via a manual migration exercise.

Can I split the locations of my data?

If you are a multi-national, you may wish to hold employee data in the geography in which your employees are located. If you have over 250 users and a minimum of 5% of those users will be using multi-geo, you can purchase “Multi-Geo” licence which allows you to define where OneDrive for Business and Exchange Online data sits on a per user basis.

You can move data to the following available Satellite Geos:

 Geo Location Code eDiscovery Data Location
Asia-Pacific APC Southeast or East Asia datacenters
Australia AUS Southeast or East Asia datacenters
Canada CAN US datacenters
Europe / Middle East / Africa EUR Europe datacenters
France FRA Europe datacenters
India IND Southeast or East Asia datacenters
Japan JPN Southeast or East Asia datacenters
Korea KOR Southeast or East Asia datacenters
North America NAM US datacenters
South Africa ZAF (eDiscovery data location coming soon)
Switzerland CHE (eDiscovery data location coming soon)
United Arab Emirates ARE (eDiscovery data location coming soon)
United Kingdom GBR Europe datacenters

 

Azure AD

The backbone of every Microsoft 365 tenancy for Identity. With any tenant deployed with a European Address, the core data is stored within the European Data Centres. Some elements as are processed in the US. We have broken down Azure AD Services and their data residency below. You can find more information about Azure AD here.

 Service United Kingdom
AAD Directory Management Ireland
Netherlands
Access ReviewsTerms of Use Ireland
Netherlands
App Proxy Ireland
Netherlands
Authentication Ireland
Netherlands
Azure AD Domain Services Ireland
Netherlands
B2B California
Ireland
Netherlands
Texas
Virginia
B2C Ireland
Netherlands
Connect Health Ireland
Netherlands
Groups Management Ireland
Netherlands
Identity Protection Ireland
Netherlands
MFA Ireland
Netherlands
Virginia
Washington
Wyoming
Privileged Identity Management Ireland
Netherlands
Reporting (Activity Logs) Ireland
Netherlands
Self Service Password Reset Ireland
Netherlands

 

How can I separate out part of my organisation's data or merge from another tenant?

Many organisations go through change due to acquisition or to splitting out part(s) of their business, and as part of this activity they may wish to bring together or separate out Office 365 data. Unfortunately, there is no easy way to do this and it is a manual task. If you need help, we perform this type of work on a regular basis – carving out SharePoint, OneDrive for Business and Exchange data from Office 365 is the most common.

Resources:

Originally published March 22 2019, Updated April 20, 2023

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