Data Residency Legacy Move Program

Applicable customer data is a term that refers to a subset of customer data defined in the Microsoft Online Services Terms:

• Exchange Online mailbox content (email body, calendar entries, and the content of email attachments)
• SharePoint site content and the files stored within that site
• Files uploaded to OneDrive
• Teams chat data for group and private chats (files in Teams folders or placed in chat are managed by SharePoint and OneDrive, respectively)

In addition to Exchange Online, SharePoint, and OneDrive; Microsoft will migrate Teams data to the local datacenter.

• Teams chat messages, including private messages and channel messages.
• Teams images used in chats.

Teams files are stored in SharePoint and Teams chat files are stored in OneDrive. Voicemail, calendar, and contacts are stored in Exchange Online. In many cases, Exchange Online, SharePoint, and OneDrive are already used by the customer in the local datacenter geo and are also part of the Microsoft 365 migration program for eligible customer countries/regions.

Due to shared dependencies between Exchange Online and SharePoint/OneDrive, any migration can't be considered completed until both services are migrated. Exchange Online and SharePoint/OneDrive often migrate at separate times and independently from one another. Customer Tenant admins receive confirmation in Message Center when each service migration is completed and can view the data location card in the Admin Center at any time to confirm the applicable customer data at rest location for each service.

Data moves are a back-end service operation with minimal impact to end users. Features that can be impacted are listed in User experience in a Multi-Geo environment. We adhere to the Microsoft Online Services Service Level Agreement (SLA) for availability so there's nothing that customers need to prepare for or to monitor during the move.

All Microsoft 365 services run the same versions in the datacenters, so you can be assured of consistent functionality. Your service is fully supported throughout the process.

Some of the Microsoft 365 services may be located in different geos for some existing customers and for customers that are in the middle of the move process. Our services run independently of each other and there's no impact on the user experience if this is the case. However, for data residency purposes, a Tenant migration can't be considered as complete until both Exchange Online and SharePoint/OneDrive are migrated to the same datacenter geo.

Customer Tenant admins can view the data location card in the Admin Center at any time to confirm the applicable customer data at rest location for each service, specifically for their Tenant. We also publish the location of datacenter geos, datacenters, and location of Microsoft 365 customer data in Where your Microsoft 365 customer data is stored as a reference for the current default applicable customer data at rest locations for new Tenant. You can verify the location of your customer data at rest via the Data Location section under your Organization Profile in the Microsoft 365 admin center.

Each service moves independently and will likely move their data at different times.

Customers aren't able to select a specific date, they can't delay their move, and we can't share a specific date or timeframe for the moves.

Data moves are a back-end operation with minimal impact to end users. The complexity, precision, and scale at which we need to perform data moves within a globally operated and automated environment prohibit us from sharing when a data move is expected to complete for your Tenant or any other single Tenant. Customers receive one confirmation in Message Center per participating service when its data move has completed.

See User experience in a Multi-Geo environment for a complete list of features that may be limited during portions of the data move for each service.

Watch the Microsoft 365 Message Center for confirmation that the move of each service's data is complete. When each service's data is moved, we post a completion notice so you get three completion notices: one each for Exchange Online, SharePoint, and Skype for Business Online. You can also verify the location of your customer data at rest via the Data Location section under your Organization Profile in the Microsoft 365 admin center.

This is a very common scenario and is fully supported. Cloud migration between datacenter geos doesn't interfere with any on-premises to cloud mailbox migrations.

Yes, however the process won't be as seamless as if Microsoft were to perform the data move.

If you create a new Tenant after the new datacenter geo is available, the new Tenant will be hosted in the new geo. This new Tenant is completely separate from your previous Tenant and you would be responsible for moving all user mailboxes, site content, domain names, and any other data. Note that you can't move the Tenant name from one Tenant to another. We recommend that you wait for the move program provided by Microsoft as we take care of moving all settings, data, and subscriptions for your users.

No, this isn't possible. Customers who have been moved to new geo datacenters can't be moved back. As a customer in any geo, you'll experience the same quality of service, performance, and security controls as you did before. Microsoft 365 Multi Geo is available to some customers as an add-on and lets a single Tenant create multiple satellite geos and move user data to those geos with data residency commitments.

Yes. Microsoft maintains a large global network with public Internet connections in more than 130 locations in 35 countries/regions around the world with peering agreements with more than 2,700 Internet Service Providers (ISPs). Users will be able to access the datacenters from wherever they are on the Internet.

There's no impact to end users accessing public folders during or after the move of public folders. However, the public folders may not be available for administration in the Exchange Admin Center tool till all public folder mailboxes are moved in same region. Refer to this article for more details.