Microsoft Teams Launches Canada Data Residency, Australia and Japan coming soon...
Published Aug 10 2018 01:19 PM 27.2K Views
Microsoft

In February, we announced Microsoft Teams data residency for India. Starting August 10, 2018 Microsoft Teams will also provide data residency for Canada. This means that all new Microsoft Teams customers in Canada will have data for conversations and chat stored at rest in Canada. New customers are the tenants that provision after August 10 2018 or customers who have not yet used the Teams service prior to this date.

 

Teams data residency in Canada, as well as our other Office 365 data residency commitments in the datacenter geo in Canada, 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: The core Teams customer data consists of chat and channel messages, associated media and all the teams and channels present in the tenant.

  • Chat/ channel messages & team structureEvery team in Microsoft Teams is backed by an Office 365 Modern 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 an Azure powered chat service. The data is also stored in a hidden folder in the user and group mailboxes to enable information protection features.
  • Images and Media:Media used in chats (except for Giphy GIFs which are not stored but are a reference link to the original Giphy URL) is stored in an Azure based Media Service that are deployed to the same locations as the chat service.

Data in the Azure Chat Service and the Azure Media Service is currently stored in-geo in 6 geos across the world:”

  • 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
  • NEW! Canada: datacenters in Quebec City and Toronto

Our goal is to provide in-geo data residency for Teams in all other Office 365 geos, including Australia, Japan, South Korea, France and more.

Go Locals around the world.PNG

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/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, OneNotes, wikis, and mailboxes that are part of the Teams experience are already stored in the geo based on your tenant affinity. Files are stored in country for Australia, Canada, India, Japan, UK and South Korea. For all other countries, files are stored in the US, the EU, or APAC geo based on tenant affinity.

 

Customers that choose to store files with a 3rd party storage provider are dependent of the storage location of those services and should therefore review the location of data at rest for those services separately.

  1. 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.
  2. 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.

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.

datares.png

Which workloads aside Teams provide data residency in Canada?

Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, Skype for business Online, Project Online and others already provide data residency in Canada  . Please see the data center maps for more information about the location of data at rest for more Office 365 services and for all our geos in the world.

 

Where in Canada exactly is this data stored?

Teams Chat and Media data will be stored in the Canada Central and Canada East Azure datacenters located in Toronto and Quebec City respectively.

 

What does this mean for new customers in Canada?

From August 10, 2018 (“Launch Date”), customers 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 Canada.

 

What does this mean for existing customers in Canada?

Customers who are already using Teams will continue to have data residency for their content stored at rest in the AMER geo. Soon, Microsoft will provide a migration feature to enable data migration for these existing Teams customers. This migration capability is expected in CY20 and a customer may then plug into the Move program available to all Office 365 customers, the details of which can be found here.

 

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 Canada 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 data-centers including Australia(end of August 2018), Japan(end of August 2018), South Korea, France and more in 2019 and beyond. Please stay tuned for more updates.

 

 

Thanks again for your time in reading this, and for all the support you’ve shown towards Microsoft Teams.

 

Cheers,

Varun Sagar

Product Manager, Microsoft Teams

 

17 Comments
Microsoft

Go Teams in Canada !!! 

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Not applicable

Any announcements around multi-geo?

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Not applicable

Any announcements around multi-geo?

Copper Contributor

So, despite geocentre availability, there is no way to move Teams data until 2019?

 

We have experimented with Teams to get a feel for the service but cannot use it until our data is in Canada.  Does this limited experimentation really pose a barrier?

 

Is it possible to delete all Teams data and "restart" on Canada Geo?

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Not applicable

Great stuff,

 

The link to the ignite session is dead (?). I think it's this session:

 

https://channel9.msdn.com/Events/Ignite/Microsoft-Ignite-Orlando-2017/BRK3071

 

 

 

Microsoft

EDITED

 

Yes we can restart you as a fresh tenant in Teams in the Canada Geo. Please note all your existing data in Teams that was created before the move(restart) will be lost.

Copper Contributor

@Varun Sagar Not looking to restart the entire tenant, just the Teams data.  Is that possible, in order to get Teams data in Canada?

Copper Contributor

I'm intrigued by the Australian resident Teams data - is the August 2018 correct? and if so, which region(s)?

 

Regards, Michael Pronin, Project Manager govTEAMS

 

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 data-centers including Australia(end of August 2018), Japan(end of August 2018), South Korea, France and more in 2019 and beyond. Please stay tuned for more updates.

 

 

Thanks again for your time in reading this, and for all the support you’ve shown towards Microsoft Teams.

 

Cheers,

Varun Sagar

Product Manager, Microsoft Teams

Copper Contributor

@Varun Sagar I appreciate the clarification.  New question: how do we reset our Teams tenancy?

 

Effective August 2018 tenant-level control for Teams was disabled.  

 

I'm not having much luck finding instructions!

Microsoft

 null null please reach out to your Microsoft contact person. They will direct you about the next steps for 'moving your Teams tenant to the new datacenter'. 

 

Thanks

Varun Sagar

Microsoft

Michael Pronin 

Teams Australia datacenters will be in New South Wales and Victoria

 

Thanks
Varun Sagar

Product Manager - O365 Teams

Copper Contributor

Our O365 tenant is in Canada. Per Microsoft's instructions, we explicitly disabled Teams the moment the new tenant was created, specifically so that we would not be locked into the North America Geo, and to be able to take advantage of Canadian data residency once available.

 

I have reconfirmed in the Microsoft 365 Admin Centre, that Teams is still turned OFF for all users.

 

But, the Data Location for Exchange, Sharepoint, and SfB says "Canada" and for Teams it says "North America".

 

No user in the tenant can possibly have used Teams at any time since it was immediately disabled when the tenant was created.

 

Now that Teams data residency in Canada is available, we want to enable Teams with Canadian data residency, but it looks like our tenant had already locked the Teams data residency to the North America geo! Why? And how to we get it changed to Canada now, since it's never been used? Waiting up to 2 years for a "move" is not acceptable, and creating a new tenant and manually moving everybody and their data is also not acceptable.

 

Copper Contributor

Eight months later and I'm still not able to get instructions on how to move my tenant's Teams and Skype for Business Data to Canada without deleting the entire tenant and starting a new one. That's really not an acceptable solution, and my staff is eager to use Teams; if we're not able to they're likely to demand access to Slack or some competing service. Surely there must be a way to accomplish this task that you've already managed for all your other types of data? 

Bronze Contributor

@autumncorvusrh Are you sure your Skype for Business data isn’t in Canada already? If you had your other data moved, Skype for Business should have gone too (although having said that, the “Moves completed by” date for Canada is June 30, 2019, so maybe it just hasn’t been done yet).

 

If you’re okay with deleting all your existing Teams data and starting fresh in the Canadian geo, talk to your Microsoft rep as that may be an option available to you. 

 

If using Teams while your data is in the North American geo isn’t an option, I don’t see how Slack or any other cloud-based service would be acceptable. None that I know of offers Canadian data residency.

 

Copper Contributor

They may not currently, but eventually one will, given that many countries and industries have geo-restrictions on where their data can be hosted. My point instead was that currently Microsoft has a foothold on that market, and they're betting big on Teams, so I hope they will make a process available for organizations like mine to actually use it - particularly when they have already done the hard work of setting up data centres throughout Canada, and all our other data (and others' Teams data) are already hosted here. Unfortunately, what I was told is that I would have to delete my entire tenant (including our Exchange and Sharepoint data) and start a new one just to get my Teams and Skype for Business data housed in Canada. Simply deleting my Teams data alone is seemingly not enough.

Copper Contributor

We have the same problem in Australia, with our older tenancy  Teams data hosted in Singapore, whilst new tenancy data is created onshore in Australia. We were also offered the 'blow away and restart' option, and declined. Our local MS Teams tech tells us that an automated 'lift and shift' process is being developed - by end of this year. Would like this sooner if possible M$

Copper Contributor

Nearly five months later and we still don't see any option to migrate our Teams data to Canadian data residency. When will this be made available? Until it is, my organization won't be using Teams, and given how closely integrated Teams has become, that makes their experience of the whole of O365 less productive.  

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