Windows 365: Alternate regions for disaster recovery now generally available

Business continuity is a top priority for organizations that rely on Windows 365 Cloud PCs. With Windows 365 cross-region disaster recovery and Windows 365 disaster recovery plus, customers can protect their Cloud PCs against regional outages by maintaining snapshots in geographically distant backup regions. Until now, these features have been limited to regions with three or more availability zones. 

Today, we're excited to announce the general availability of alternate regions for Windows 365 cross-region disaster recovery and Windows 365 disaster recovery plus, expanding additional disaster recovery coverage to geographies that previously only had a single supported region. This release adds four new backup region options, giving customers in Australia, Canada, India, and the US West greater flexibility in their disaster recovery strategy. 

What are alternate regions? 

Alternate regions extend the Windows 365 footprint within a data residency boundary where a recommended region already exists. They provide one additional region for disaster recovery needs but don't offer availability zone support. Availability zones are separated groups of datacenters within a region, each with independent power, cooling, and networking, so that if one zone experiences an outage, the remaining zones continue operating. Because alternate regions lack this infrastructure, they cannot distribute workloads across multiple isolated zones within the region. 

For Windows 365, alternate regions are available exclusively for Windows 365 cross-region disaster recovery and Windows 365 disaster recovery plus — they are not used for Cloud PC provisioning.

Available alternate regions 

The following alternate regions are now available in general availability as backup locations in Cloud PC configurations: 

 

These regions pair with their corresponding recommended region to provide cross-region disaster recovery within the same data residency boundary. To learn more, read Windows 365 requirements | Microsoft Learn.  

What to keep in mind 

• Disaster recovery only: Alternate regions are supported for disaster recovery scenarios only. They are not available for Cloud PC provisioning. 

• No availability zone support: Alternate regions don't support availability zones. During a zone outage, the entire backup region may be unavailable. However, the likelihood of both primary and backup regions experiencing outages simultaneously is low. 

• Intentional selection required: Existing Cloud PC configurations will not be updated automatically to include alternate regions. Administrators must explicitly opt in.