Exchange Front Door location

Copper Contributor

Hello Microsoft and Community,

We have recently seen a change in our environment and the Exchange Front Door Location now being located in Amsterdam North Holland, where it once was located in the United States. This has caused all types of Outlook Slowness within Citrix, WVD, and Exchange in general. How can we change this back to original location in the United States and regain the better performance? Thanks.

Paul Rath

Email address removed

715.204.2111

14 Replies

The first thing you need to know is, "where is your data stored"?

Go to your admin portal, and go to
Settings > Org Settings > Organization Profile > Data Location


That is where your Data is stored and it cannot be moved. You would have to go get a new subscription and the data storage location goes off the Org Profile address (country)
There was a time before 2020 when you could change it, but not anymore.

The next thing is, you said "This casued all types of Outlook Slowness"
I would say you need to go do some network connectivity reports and get some actually numbers. Saying "its slow" means nothing. You need facts to back up what you say your issue is.

So, you should start in the 365 Admin portal, then go to

Health > Network Connectivity
Strart runing test to get facts that backs up your statment of "its slow"

 

The link below is old, from 2020, so more features might be here now, but its a good read

 

Microsoft 365 network connectivity test tool now with report sharing is released to preview - Micros...

If settings are controlled by location or by clock, calendar, or location, perhaps it's as simple as syncing settings?

Has anyone got more information on this? I have found the articles on Docs and made sure my DNS provider is not set up a DNS recursive resolver and is set to "DNS Only" so that's not the issue but I am based in the UK all my other Office 365 services are point to the UK put its only exchange pointing to the US.

I'm having a similar problem. Did you find a resolution? It is funny how a lot of the articles related state going to the M365 Network Connectivity Center but that just gives the information that you are not set up to the best Front Door. All of my data is set to US but it is sending me through Australia to get to it.

@MXSIVE and @prath00 I am seeing the same issue. All data is set to the US but the difference for me is that only our Exchange front door is going through Australia. SharePoint is going through a server that is in the US and while it didn't choose the closest front door, it's at least in the same state. Any help would be much appreciated!

@MXSIVEand @Roger1175 I just started having this issue on July 25th as well. Have two clients in California and the connectivity test was show their Exchange Front Door Location to be Melbourne Australia, resulting in increasing slow loading in the Outlook desktop app, the online outlook wasn't running all that bad though. Even pinging outlook.office365.com in a command prompt was showing me an Australia location.

 

I noticed both my clients had one thing in common, they were both using the google public dns 8.8.8.8, so I decided to swap them over to 1.1.1.1 and flushed the dns server cache and also did an ipconfig /flushdns on the computers. After that I started seeing the connectivity test and the ping to outlook.office365.com resolving to the San Jose California or Phoenix Arizona. I also saw the outlook desktop app running great again with their online exchange.

 

So check your primary dns and maybe try a different one. For my case swapping from google public dns to 1.1.1.1 seems to have resolved my issues.

@Dan_L215 

 

SOrry for the delayed response to this Front Door Issue I reported early on. We did exactly that. Changed our DNS and flushed the DNS server cache and also did an ipconfig /flushdns on the computers.

Thanks so much, we were using google public DNS and changed to Cloudflare and that appears to have fixed it for us as well.

@David_Petree 

 

I hear the same thing from support 'YOUR DATA IS IN THE US' correct but my network is being routed through North Carolina even though I am in California and the best front door is in california.

 

Changing our DNS to 1.1.1.1 didn't fix the issue.

@GBoswellSimivalley 

 

thanks. Yea, not surprised it’s the same thing you hear from support.

 

We have a couple of other cases were working on with the same issue. If/when I get any new info, I’ll pop it in here

@David_Petree@GBoswellSimivalley we are seeing this as well.  Please post any fixes or workarounds that you are able to find.  We set our Public DNS to 1.1.1.1 or 9.9.9.9 and about half the time it works and pulls from the US front door closest to us, the other half of the time it pulls from Australia.  

@cwallrqn Microsoft support has been COMPLETELY USELESS  in regards to this problem.  I have users who hate cached mode because they have to wait 5-10 minutes for an email to come through. 

 

The potential fixes we have discussed are:

1. using Azure DNS rather than cloudflair

2. Setting a VPN tunnel up - we have a tunnel going to AWS via 'AWS Direct Connect' but I can't find if Microsoft offers a service like this

 

Not sure either would fix the problem.  I'm annoyed that Microsoft support comes back with a lame answer of 'Your data is in the USA", I'm aware of that! They are routing me through Australia or Chicago to get to my data that i'm pretty sure resides in San Jose.

Hello

 

If anyone is still having this issue, we found it was linked to our router's content filtering settings.

We ran an extended test at DNS leak test which returned something like *.cleanbrowsing.org which led us to the content filtering being the source of the issue.

 

Switching content filtering off switched us back to the correct Exchange Front Door location.

 

Chris