MC1444064 - Introduction of Macro Region Geography-Based Environment Provisioning

Macro region geography enablement affects environment provisioning and enables customers to select a macro region geography during environment creation.

How does this affect me?
With this change:

• Customers will select a macro region geography (e.g., North America, Europe & UK, Asia-Pacific) instead of a specific datacenter region.
• The platform will automatically assign the optimal datacenter region within the selected Macro region geography based on capacity, availability, scale, and performance considerations.

This approach helps ensure a more scalable, resilient, and performant experience for all customers while continuing to respect data residency commitments.

As we begin rolling out Macro region globally and make it generally available:

1. If customers need the ability to select a specific datacenter region during creation of new environments for Dynamics 365 & Power Platform, they need to enable advanced data residency for 100% of Microsoft 365 seats on that tenant.
2. Continuity for existing environments: As of the date of the announcement, Microsoft does not anticipate impact on existing environments, which continue to retain the selected datacenter region. This is subject to future adjustments due to technical (capacity, performance, compute) constraints and changing circumstances beyond reasonable control.

Customers will be able to see their macro region geography and datacenter region in the environment properties and in the environment list. See the list of macro region geographies here.

Data Residency & Compliance
Data will always reside within the selected macro region geography boundary.

• If a customer needs EUDB, they must select macro region geography 'European Union (EU) and European Free Trade Association (EFTA)'. This ensures their data at rest is in EUDB boundary. Learn more about EUDB here.
• Note: Australia and India geographies have tax restrictions and need data residency alignment and accountability for compliance with local tax reporting rules and for auditability within jurisdiction. Customers needing their data at rest to stay in Australia and India will need advanced data residency (ADR).
• The platform does not expand residency guarantees beyond contractual commitments.

For customers with ADR criteria met, D365 and Power Platform customer data is stored at rest within the customer’s selected datacenter region.

Customer Experience Example
If the customer does not have advanced data residency (ADR):

• The customer selects “Europe & UK” as their Macro Region.
• The platform assigns a datacenter region (e.g., Germany, or Italy) based on capacity and availability.
• The customer can view the assigned datacenter region within the macro region geography after provisioning.

If the customer has ADR enabled for 100% of their M365 seats in that tenant:

• They qualify for datacenter region selection for D365 and power Platform and will see list of Power Platform and Dynamics 365 datacenter regions to select from, during environment creation.
• This ensures customer data is stored at rest within the selected datacenter region.

If the customer does not have ADR and requires datacenter region selection (e.g., France), they will need to get the ADR SKU. Please learn more here.