The below is a quick note for Canadian customers. We are now almost at the end of the window to signup for the GoLocal move where Microsoft will move your North American tenant to the Canadian datacenter region. Note that the message states core customer data is what will be moved. The below message should be in your Office 365 Message Center:
From the above message:
Customers with data residency requirements who would like to have their core customer data moved to the Canada datacenter region, will need to request a move before October 31, 2016. Data moves will complete within 24 months after the enrollment period. We recommend that you take no action, unless your organization needs core customer data to be stored at rest in the Canada datacenter region. By choosing to move your data, customers limit Microsoft’s possibilities to optimize the location of their core customer data at rest in either their current or the Canada datacenter region.
If your organization has a requirement to store core customer data at rest within Canada, you will have to request a move via the Office 365 admin center. The deadline for requesting your move is October 31, 2016. Data moves will complete within 24 months after the enrollment period. No action is required if you do not have data residency requirements or if you were previously notified of a data move completing. If you do not request to move your data, we may still move your customer data to the Canada datacenter region as part of our optimization procedures. In either case, Microsoft will respect the data residency commitments made in the Microsoft Online Services Terms.
The same process has happened when new datacentres were brought online in other areas. This is covered in Moving core data to new Office 365 datacenter regions
Office 365 Datacenter Moves
Data residency option
We provide a data residency option to existing Office 365 customers who are covered by the datacenter regions listed in the table above. With this option, customers with data residency requirements can request to move their core customer data into the new region. We recommend our customers to take no action, unless their organization needs core customer data to be stored at rest in their respective new datacenter region. By choosing to move their data, customers limit Microsoft’s possibilities to optimize the location of core customer data at rest in either their current or the new datacenter region. As a customer in any of those two regions, you will experience the same quality of service, performance and security controls as you did before.
For customers who need to have their core data moved to the new region:
- Customers will need to request to have their data moved within a set enrollment window. Review the How to request your data move page for more details about the enrollment window for your region and the steps to enroll into the program.
- Data moves can take up to 24 months after the request period to complete.
- We introduce no unique capabilities, features or compliance certifications with the new datacenter region.
- The complexity, precision and scale at which we need to perform data moves within a globally operated and automated environment prohibit us from sharing when a data move is expected to complete for your tenant or any other single tenant. Customers will receive one confirmation in Message Center per participating service when its data move has completed.
- Data moves are a back-end service operation with minimal impact to end-users. Features that can be impacted are listed on the During and after your data move page. We adhere to the Microsoft Online Services Service Level Agreement (SLA) for availability so there is nothing that customers need to prepare for or to monitor during the move. Notification of any service maintenance is done if needed.
How to request a data move
What happens during the move?
During and after your data move
Frequently Asked Questions
Please review the above to help you determine the correct decision for your organisaiton. This should also be documented within your organisation with the reasons for making the decision.
Cheers,
Rhoderick
