Microsoft 365 Multi-Geo

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.

For a video introduction to Microsoft 365 Multi-Geo, see SharePoint 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 Microsoft Entra ID. Because your Tenant information is mastered centrally and synchronized into each geo location, sharing and experiences involving anyone from your company contain global awareness.

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 users. 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 users. 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
• Standalone Exchange Online Plan 1 or Plan 2
• Standalone OneDrive Plan 1 or Plan 2
• Standalone SharePoint Plan 1 or Plan 2

Note that Small Business products do not currently qualify for Multi-Geo, even if they contain elements of the above list.

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.

Microsoft 365 Multi-Geo availability

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

To learn more about the definition of each region such as what countries or cities contain the datacenters, see Overview and Definitions.

If you utilize Microsoft Purview eDiscovery Standard or Premium, see Microsoft 365 Multi-Geo eDiscovery configuration and Set up compliance boundaries for eDiscovery investigations for additional information on region usage and data storage as it relates to Microsoft Purview eDiscovery.

Getting started

Whether you're a CSP partner managing your customer’s Microsoft 365 subscriptions or an Enterprise Agreement customer managing your own subscriptions, you can follow these steps to get started with Multi-Geo:

1. Ensure that you purchase Multi-Geo for at least 5% of the total eligible users in your Microsoft 365 subscription. Remember that you'll need a license for each user you want to host in a Satellite Geography location.

2. Before you can start using Microsoft 365 Multi-Geo, Microsoft needs to configure your Tenant for Multi-Geo support. This one-time automatic configuration process is triggered after you order the Multi-Geo Capabilities in Microsoft 365 and the licenses show up in your Tenant. You'll receive workload-specific notifications in the Microsoft 365 message center once the Tenant has completed the configuration process for each workload, and then you 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.

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're ready to set up Microsoft 365 Multi-Geo, configure your tenant for multi-geo.

6. Set up search.

See also

Multi-Geo in Exchange Online and OneDrive

Multi-Geo Capabilities in OneDrive and SharePoint

Multi-Geo Capabilities in Exchange Online

Teams experience in a multi-geo environment