In case you have not yet read it, the final call for the Data Residency Legacy Move Program was re-opened November 1, 2022 and is still open by April 30, 2023. The Data Residency Legacy Move Program is a service allowing to move your Microsoft 365 data from one data center to another. For example if you have a Microsoft 365 tenant residing in the EU and your company is in Germany, you might want or even have to have your data in Germany. Depending on your company their might be compliance, legal or other requirements to have the data within Germany.
If you created a new Microsoft 365 tenant some time ago you could choose the data residency. However, new Microsoft 365 data centers were built over time. So if your Microsoft 365 tenant is quite old you probably did not have the option to choose Germany or another newer Microsoft 365 data center residency. That’s why Microsoft
How to check my Microsoft 365 data location?
- To check your data location login to your Microsoft 365 admin center.
- Go to Settings
- Org settings
- Organization profile
- Data location
- On the pane, right hand side, you can view your data location, in this screenshot it shows Exchange and SharePoint is in the EU and Teams in Germany
How to opt-in for Microsoft 365 data residency move?
- To check your data location login to your Microsoft 365 admin center.
- Go to Settings
- Org settings
- Organization profile
- Data residency
- On the pane, right hand side, you can read further details and check the box to opt-in (only if your tenant is entitled for this!)
Please note, once submitted the request cannot be undone.
How long can it take to get the data moved?
The migration of the data could take up to 24 months beginning after the request deadline.
What’s the user impact?
The impact on users are minimal because it is a backend service operation.
Microsoft 365 Advanced Data Residency (ADR)
Microsoft is deprecating the Data Residency Legacy Move Program but is still building new data centers over time in certain regions. Microsoft 365 commercial customers in that region then might want to move to that nearby data center location. This can be also accomplished utilizing the Microsoft 365 Advanced Data Residency (ADR) add-on. The ADR is an add-on licensing options intended for enterprises with specific requirements to move their data residency. To leverage ADR the company must comply with the specific requirements which can be read in the ADR’s documentation.
Conclusion, opinion and summary
In my opinion Microsoft 365 data residency should only be moved if absolutely required due to compliance, legal or other regulatory requirements. I appreciate that Microsoft offers options to move data from one data center region or location to another via backend service operations. That’s more seamless and with minimal user impact compared to other ways, e.g. tenant to tenant migration.
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