Microsoft Teams Launches UK Data Residency, other geos coming soon...
Office 365 is deeply committed to be the most trusted cloud service for productivity. Here at Microsoft Teams, we take every effort to make security, compliance and trust a huge priority and align to this goal/mission of Office 365. To that end, starting Nov 1st, 2017, we are proud to announce that Microsoft Teams will provide data residency in the UK. This means that new Customers who sign up for Teams after this date will automatically receive the benefit of having their data stored in country.
In addition to the highly secure productivity capabilities enjoyed by Office 365 customers around the world, the Teams UK data centers support our goals of in-country data residency, failover and disaster recovery to help effectively address the legal, regulatory and compliance needs of customers in industries like banking, government, public sector and healthcare.
So, how do I think about my Teams data and where is it stored geographically?
Covered below is a brief synopsis of Teams Data which you may have also seen in the Ignite Breakout session on Microsoft Teams architecture.
- Chats/Teams and Channels: Every Microsoft Team is backed underneath by an Office 365 Modern Group and the Group’s SharePoint site and mailbox. Private Chats (including group chats), Channel Messages sent in channels of a team, the organization of teams and channels within them are stored in the Azure Powered Chat service. Data is also journaled into User and Group mailboxes for achieving information protection features.
- Images and Media: The 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 the Azure based Media Services that complement the chat service in terms of data location.
- Files: Files (including the OneNote and Wiki in channels) that are transacted in channels are stored in the Team SharePoint site where channels are modeled as folders in the Document library. The files shared in 1xN Chats or Chats during meetings/calls are uploaded into the user’s (the one who shares the file) OneDrive for Business and a share link is presented to the other user(s) in the chat. These are all stored in the same compliant storage that SharePoint/OneDrive for business use today.
- Tabs: Tabs that are pinned to channels present views into different other systems and the answer to where the data is stored depends on the kind of tab it is. The tab itself does not store any data. For example: a SharePoint tab will store data based on where the SharePoint site collection is created/provisioned while a Wrike Tab will store data in Wrike's system while presenting a view of it within the channel.
Note: Exchange and SharePoint workloads already offer data residency in multiple Geos and customers have to opt-in to have their data moved in country. So where available, and if the customer has opted in already, the Microsoft Teams architecture takes advantage of these features of Exchange and SharePoint for applicable Teams data and stores them in-country.
Chat/Teams and Channels, Images and Media (points a&b above)
The core Teams Customer content that is distinct from Exchange and SharePoint is the chat/channel messages, media inserted into them and Teams and Channel structure for a tenant. This is stored in the Azure based chat service across multiple disaster recovery enabled Microsoft data centers in the 3-different regional partitions and now, UK.
- APAC: DCs in Singapore and Hong Kong
- EMEA: DCs in Dublin & Amsterdam
- AMER: DCs in Bay, CA and Boydton, VA
- UK: DCs in Cardiff and London (starting Nov 1st)
Based on the tenant sign up country code, all traffic for the tenant is routed to a regional partition. With the launch of UK data residency, UK based tenants that have not had a single user already sign into Teams will be re-directed to the UK data centers and the UK instances of the Teams back-end services that store Customer content at rest. Prior to this, all UK Tenants data has been stored in the EMEA Datacenters for Teams in Dublin & Amsterdam.
Which workloads are already in UK and where exactly is the Teams data stored?
Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, Skype for business Online, Project Online and others already support data residency in the UK. Please see the data center map here for more information about workloads and geo support in all regions of the world.
Where in UK is this data stored?
Teams Chat and Media data will be stored in the UK South and UK West datacenters located in Cardiff, and London respectively.
What does this mean for new UK Customers?
Any new UK Customers or tenants (UK Customers are defined as those with Tenant Sign up Country = United Kingdom) signing up for Microsoft Teams post Nov 1st, or existing customers that that have not used the service (no login to Teams) will be routed to the UK data-centers. The trigger is the first user from the tenant logging into Teams (through any of the clients), and not the purchase of the Office 365 SKU that grants them access to Microsoft Teams.
What does this mean for existing UK Customers?
UK Customers or tenants who are already using Teams will not have the ability to transition to the local data centers at the Launch Date and will continue to have their data in-region I.e. in EMEA. Later in CY2018, our Team will provide a migration feature to enable data migration from in-region(EMEA) to in-country(UK). This migration capability is expected in CY18 and when it does become available, a customer interested in data residency will be provided a mechanism to request to move their Teams data over.
If I have more questions, who should I talk to?
Please do not hesitate to contact your Account Team or if you have more questions about Teams deployments and how the availability of data residency in UK affects your timelines to deploy. Based on your position in your unique journey of deploying Teams, they will recommend the best approach to take advantage of UK Data Residency
What is the roadmap for data residency?
So, we started with providing support in each of the 3 regional hubs. And now, we are going into specific Geo's to provide in-country data residency. UK is just the first step, but our long-term goal is to provide data residency provisions for Teams Core Customer Content (Chat/Media) in all the Office 365 country based data-centers like India, Australia, Canada, Japan, South Korea and more ...
*Dates shown above are not committed dates and are subject to change.
Thanks again for your time in reading this, and for all the support and love you shown towards Microsoft Teams. Please keep the feedback and questions coming through all the different forums available to you. We are listening.
Cheers,
Ansuman