Microsoft Teams will provide data residency for Australia and Japan starting August 27, 2018. This means that all new Microsoft Teams customers in Australia and Japan will have data for conversations and chat stored at rest in Australia and Japan respectively. New customers are the O365 tenants that are provisioned after the date of launch stated above or customers who have not yet used the Teams service prior to the date of launch.
Teams data residency in Australia and Japan respectively, as well as our other Office 365 data residency commitments in the datacenters located in Australia and Japan, help regulated organizations, like in education, banking, public sector, government and healthcare, onboard to Teams and Office 365 while complying with their data residency requirements.
Where your Teams data is stored
Your Teams data is stored differently depending on the content type. Please watch the Ignite Breakout session on Microsoft Teams architecture for an in-depth discussion.
Core Teams customer data: If customer provisions its tenant in Australia, Canada, the European Union, India, Japan, the United Kingdom, or the United States, Microsoft will store the following customer data at rest only within that location: (1) Microsoft Teams chats, team and channel conversations, images, voicemail messages, and contacts, (2) SharePoint Online site content and the files stored within that site, and (3) files uploaded to OneDrive for Business.
Chat, channel messages, team structure: Every team in Microsoft Teams is backed by an Office 365 Group and its SharePoint site and Exchange mailbox. Private chats (including group chats), messages sent as part of a conversation in a channel, and the structure of teams and channels are stored in a chat service running in Azure. The data is also stored in a hidden folder in the user and group mailboxes to enable Information Protection features.
Voicemail and Contacts: Voicemails are stored in Exchange. Contacts are stored in Exchange-based cloud data store. Exchange and the Exchange-based cloud store already provide data residency in each of the worldwide datacenter geos. For all Teams customers voicemail and contacts are stored in-country for Australia, Canada, France, India, Japan, UK, South Korea and US. For all other countries, files are stored in the US, Europe, or Asia-Pacific location based on tenant affinity.
Images and Media: Media used in chats (except for Giphy GIFs which are not stored but are a reference link to the original Giphy service URL, Giphy is a non-Microsoft service) is stored in an Azure based media service that is deployed to the same locations as the chat service.
Files: Files (including OneNote and Wiki) that somebody shares in a channel are stored in the team’s SharePoint site. Files shared in a private chat or a chat during a meeting or call are uploaded and stored in the OneDrive for Business account of the user who shares the file. Exchange, SharePoint and OneDrive already provide data residency in each of the worldwide datacenter geos. So, for existing customers, all files, OneNote notebooks, Teams wiki content, and mailboxes that are part of the Teams experience are already stored in the location based on your tenant affinity. Files are stored in-country for Australia, Canada, France, India, Japan, UK and South Korea. For all other countries, files are stored in the US, Europe, or Asia Pacific location based on tenant affinity.
This rollout furthers the in-country data residency capabilities of Microsoft Teams. As of this release, the Microsoft Teams services described above store data at rest in the following locations:
NEW! Australia: datacenters in New South Wales and Victoria
NEW! Japan: datacenters in Tokyo(Saitama) and Osaka
APAC [Asia Pacific]: datacenters in Singapore and Hong Kong
EMEA [Europe, Middle East and Asia]: datacenters in Dublin & Amsterdam
AMER [Americas – North and South]: datacenters in Bay, CA and Boydton, VA
UK: datacenters in Cardiff and London
India: datacenters in Chennai and Pune
Canada datacenters in Quebec City and Toronto
Please note that customers that allow users to store files with a third-party storage provider are dependent on the storage location of those services and should, therefore, review the location of data at rest for those services separately.
Tabs: Tabs allow users to pin information from apps and services to a channel. Thus, it varies by type of the tab where the data is stored. The tab itself does not store any data. For example, a SharePoint tab will store data based on where the SharePoint site collection was provisioned. A tab that includes information from a partner will store the data directly in the system used by the partner and only present a view of it.
Other partner apps: Microsoft does not provide any data residency support for apps and services from partners that you might be using within the Microsoft Teams experience. Please review information from those solutions directly to learn about where their data is being stored.
We will continue to roll out Microsoft Teams to more local datacenters aligned with the O365 data residency strategy.
FAQ
Where do I see my data location in the Office 365 admin portal?
Very recently, we have added Teams to the “Data location” page in the Office 365 Admin Portal under Home\Organizational Profile. This shows you the location of your Teams data, just as it does for the other workloads.
Which workloads aside Teams provide data residency in Australia and Japan?
Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, Skype for business Online, Project Online and others already provide data residency in Australia and Japan. Please see the datacenter maps for more information about the location of data at rest for more Office 365 services and for all our geos in the world. for more information about the location of data at rest for more Office 365 services and for all our geos in the world.
Where exactly in Australia and Japan is this data stored?
Teams chat and media data will be stored in the Australia East and Australia South East Azure datacenters located in New South Wales and Victoria respectively. For Japan datacenters Teams chat and media data will be stored in the Japan East and Japan West located in Tokyo(Saitama) and Osaka respectively.
What does this mean for new customers in Australia and Japan?
From August 27, 2018 (“Launch Date”), customers from Australia and Japan who have never previously logged into Microsoft Teams (i.e. no user in their tenant has ever accessed teams.microsoft.com or signed into any Teams client app) will have data residency in Australia and Japan respectively.
What does this mean for existing customers in Australia and Japan?
Customers who are already using Teams will continue to have data residency for their content stored at rest in the APAC location.
If I have more questions, who should I talk to?
Please do not hesitate to contact your Account Team or FastTrack, if you have more questions about Teams deployments and how the availability of data residency in Australia affects your timelines to deploy. Based on your requirements, they will recommend the best approach for you.
What is the roadmap for data residency in other countries?
Our goal is to provide data residency for Teams in all the Office 365 country-based datacenters.
Thanks again for your time in reading this, and for all the support you’ve shown towards Microsoft Teams.
Varun Sagar
Product Manager, Microsoft Teams
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