This topic provides information about few considerations for administrators to protect SharePoint Online and Teams data whenever your organization enables Multi-Geo in its Microsoft 365 tenant.
Overview
❗ Important
The Multi-Geo Storage Mapping option is available only on the SharePoint app on the inSync Management Console. You cannot create Multi-Geo Storage Mapping from the Teams app on the inSync Management Console.
The Multi-Geo Storage Mapping option is available only for Multi-Geo tenants.
For Teams, Conversations data is backed up at the central geo location. Files and Wiki data that is backed up as a part of SharePoint Online and displayed as Teams sites, Multi-Geo Storage Mapping is supported as per SharePoint Online mappings defined.
inSync provides support for protecting SharePoint Online and Teams data for Microsoft 365 Multi-Geo tenants. This feature helps administrators meet their data residency requirements.
With this support, inSync enables you to do the following:
Automatically discover all the sites (SharePoint and Teams' sites) from each geo location.
Automatically identify new geo locations enabled in Microsoft 365 tenants.
Automate the storage assignment for the discovered sites and not configured sites from all the mapped geo locations.
Use the Multi-Geo Storage Mapping feature to automate the storage assignment for the discovered and not configured sites from all the mapped geo locations.
Multi-Geo Storage Mapping refers to the mapping of your Microsoft 365 geo locations with inSync Storage to enable backup and restore of SharePoint and Teams sites according to the geographic location as per your business needs.
With Multi-Geo Storage Mapping for SharePoint Online, inSync allows you to do the following:
Automatically discover newly added sites (SharePoint and Teams' sites) with new geo locations.
Map these newly discovered sites (SharePoint and Teams' sites) with the available inSync Storage regions for backup and restore.
Automate the storage assignment for the newly discovered sites from all the mapped geo-locations from the Auto-Configuration wizard on the inSync Management Console.
Prerequisite
Microsoft 365 tenant has Microsoft 365 Multi-Geo feature enabled i.e your Microsoft 365 tenant is a Multi-Geo tenant. For more information, see Microsoft 365 Multi-Geo.
Ensure that the Enable Auto Configuration of Sites for Backup option is selected.
Enable Multi-Geo capabilities for Microsoft 365 tenant
Microsoft allows you to enable Multi-Geo capabilities for your Microsoft 365 tenant. By enabling Multi-Geo capabilities on the tenant, you can have a single Microsoft 365 tenant that spans across multiple data center geographies, and have full control over where the data is stored. Currently, Multi-Geo is supported for Exchange Online, OneDrive, and SharePoint.
In a Multi-Geo tenant, information about geo locations, groups, and locations is mastered in the Azure active directory (AD). Administrators can use service admin centers to manage geo locations. For more information, see Microsoft documentation.
You may have to reach out to a Microsoft account representative to enable this feature for your Microsoft 365 tenant.
Enable data locations
Management of Multi-Geo feature is available through the SharePoint admin center. For more information, see Microsoft blog post.
When a user creates a SharePoint site in a Multi-Geo environment, the user’s Preferred Data Location (PDL) is used to determine the location where the site is created. If no PDL is set for the user, the site will be created in the central location. If the user's PDL changes and there is a need to move the site to a new location, PowerShell Commands can be triggered to move the site from one location to another.
Use the PowerShell Commands mentioned below to move SharePoint sites to a specific location.
Sites with no associated groups
Start-SPOSiteContentMove -SourceSiteUrl <siteURL> -DestinationDataLocation <DestinationDataLocation> -DestinationUrl <DestinationSiteURL>
Sites associated with a group
Set-SPOUnifiedGroup -PreferredDataLocation <PDL> -GroupAlias <GroupAlias>Get-SPOUnifiedGroup -GroupAlias <GroupAlias>Start-SPOUnifiedGroupMove -GroupAlias <GroupAlias> -DestinationDataLocation <DestinationDataLocation>Get-SPOUnifiedGroupMoveState -GroupAlias <GroupAlias>
For more information, see Microsoft documentation.
Get Started
inSync must have permissions to access SharePoint Online and Teams data to protect it. Before you begin with the Multi-Geo storage mapping, ensure that you complete the configuration steps to protect your SharePoint Online and Teams data. For more information on how to provide inSync access to SharePoint Online and Teams data, see,
After the configuration is complete, perform the following steps:
inSync discovers all the standalone SharePoint sites and Teams sites (That have Files and Wiki data of Teams) within your organization. By default, the App Status of all the discovered sites is Not Configured.
For Microsoft 365 Multi-Geo tenants, a notification message is displayed when inSync discovers sites with new geographic locations (geo locations). This notification appears every time when inSync discovers sites with a new geo location.
To configure the discovered sites with multiple geo locations for backup and restore, you can create Multi-Geo storage mappings from two locations on the inSync Management Console:
Notifications and site geo location updates
With Microsoft 365 Multi-Geo capability, your SharePoint site backup data resides in the storage mapped to your site geo location. When geo location changes, mapping it to a different storage location helps you meet your data residency requirements. Your backups will reside in a data location, which is compliant with your updated geo location.
You can now leverage the timely notifications from the inSync Management Console to identify geo location updates and update the storage accordingly.
Workflow
The following workflow describes the next steps for administrators when a site geo location changes.
The following steps enable you to map and update the storage. It also provides information about the backup and restore activity scenarios after updating the storage.
Step 1: Ensure that the updated geo location is mapped to storage in the Multi-Geo Storage Mapping settings.
Step 2: Update the storage from the Site Settings area on the Site Summary page.
Step 3: Understand the backup and restore scenarios.
Step 4: Monitor Audit Trails.
Step 1: Map the storage
The SharePoint Site Summary page displays a notification and an alert when a geo location is not mapped to storage.
For more information on how to create Multi-Geo Storage Mapping, see:
Step 2: Update the storage
After mapping the storage in the Multi-Geo Storage Mapping settings, you must update the storage from the Site Settings area on the Site Summary page. Click Update Storage.
📝 Note
The Update Storage option appears only if you have mapped storage in the Multi-Geo Storage Mapping settings.
📝 Note
Once you have updated the storage, the snapshots in the previous storage will be accessible during restore activity. In addition, these snapshots will be retained in the previous storage till the data retention policy is met.
The backup and restore activities will continue as per the storage settings of the previous geo location until you update storage as per Multi-Geo Storage Mapping.
You can configure the Multi-Geo notifications on the inSync Management Console. For more information about configuring notifications, see Configure Alert Settings.
Step 3: Understand backup and restore scenarios
Consider the following when you perform backup and restore activities after updating the storage:
The first backup will be a full scan backup.
You can restore from an older backup snapshot, which is associated with the previous geo location. The restore location will be the new geo location.
During a SharePoint site migration to a new geo location, the in-place restore activities will fail.
The Team site backup takes a longer time to complete in comparison with Team conversation and metadata backups. Ensure that few snapshots as per the new storage are available during a Team restore activity. This prerequisite ensures that the corresponding Team site backup data is available as per new storage during restore activity.
When you restore Teams data to a Teams site location residing in a different geo location, the following scenarios are applicable:
The data restore of Team conversation and Team site content fails. This failure occurs if the associated SharePoint site of the destination Team is in a different geo location than the source Team site.
📝 Note
The Team conversation content is restored in HTML format.
The metadata backups will be successful.
Step 4: Monitor audit trails
The administrators' activities are displayed on the Audit Trails page. The following activities are tracked from the Audit Trails page:
Updating the Multi-Geo Storage Mapping
Configuring the SharePoint site
Updating the storage mapping for a SharePoint site as per Multi-Geo Storage Mapping
For more information, see the Audit Trails page.
Site Migration Scenarios
A Global Administrator or SharePoint Administrator can migrate a SharePoint site from one geo location to another using Powershell commands as mentioned in this Microsoft blog post. The migration activity moves the SharePoint site from one geo location to another within the Multi-Geo environment.
The status of migration determines the following:
In progress: An in-progress status indicates site migration is in progress. During this interval, the SharePoint site will be in read-only mode. As a result, the in-place restore activities won't work on this site until migration completes. However, backup activities will work on the site for the same duration.
📝 Note
Backups might be complete with errors as few APIs, such as fetching site alerts, are non-functional in this duration.
Completed: inSync will fetch updated site properties, such as geo location, site URL, web template, and title during the SharePoint discovery or site backup activity. The alerts for changes to site geo location are generated immediately after the SharePoint discovery or site backup activity. Any subsequent reminder email notifications for site geo location change events will be as per the schedule defined in the Site Geo Location Changed alert. The backup and restore activities will now continue as per the new geolocation of the site.
For more information about alerts for Multi-Geo support, see Alerts.
📝 Note
After successful migration, the Team Metadata backups might fail. You can try again in 60 minutes. This is the time required by Microsoft to refresh the changes as per the new geo location.
Site URL updates in inSync
The following points are applicable for site URL updates to reflect in inSync:
SharePoint Online: After completion of site migration, inSync validates updated site URLs during SharePoint Online discovery or site backup activity. The new site URLs will be updated on the SharePoint Sites Summary page.
Teams:
inSync updates the new URL of the Team site during SharePoint Online discovery or site backup activity. As a next step, the new URL of the Team site will be updated on the Team's Summary page.
The Team backup activity will also fetch updated SharePoint site collection URL for the Team site. The new URL will be updated on the SharePoint Site Summary and corresponding Teams Summary pages.
📝 Note
Important The immediate few backups after the URL updates in inSync might fail with ESITEURLCHANGED, EFPERM, or ESITENOTFOUND error. The subsequent backups will be successful. For more information, see Troubleshooting SaaS Apps issues.
3. When a SharePoint site URL is updated or renamed using Powershell commands or from the SharePoint admin center, inSync updates the Site URL during SharePoint discovery or site backup activity.
Multi-Geo Storage Mapping
You can define and create Multi-Geo Storage Mapping from the Auto Configuration section on the Settings tab.
Procedure
Go to the Settings tab.
Click Edit from the Auto Configuration section. The Edit Auto Configuration window is displayed.
Click Create Mapping. The Multi-Geo Storage Mapping pop-up appears with a list of all the Microsoft 365 Geo locations enabled in your Microsoft 365 tenant.
Click the dropdown to view the list of available inSync storage regions and assign one as per your requirement.
inSync will now backup sites based on the storage mappings provided. Once you have successfully defined the Multi-Geo Storage Mapping using Create Mapping option, this option is renamed to View Mappings. You can view and update the Multi-Geo storage mapping using this option.
📝 Note
When you update a storage mapping for a particular geo location, this new mapping will take effect only for the newly discovered and added sites for that geo location. The existing sites within that geo location continue to be backed up as per the old storage mappings. For example, India geo location is currently mapped to <ABC> storage. Marketing site is a part of India geo location and is mapped to <ABC> storage. Now, you change the storage mapping for India to <XYZ> storage. In the subsequent discovery cycle, for the existing Marketing site, storage mapping continues to be <ABC> storage and not <XYZ>. The newly discovered sites in India will be mapped to the updated <XYZ>. storage.
❗ Important
If you want to automatically assign storage to all the Not Configured sites and the sites that will be discovered in the future, you must select the Also apply this backup configuration settings to Teams already discovered but not yet configured for backup option from the Edit Auto Configuration wizard.
If you do not select the Also apply this backup configuration settings to Teams already discovered but not yet configured for backup option from the Edit Auto Configuration wizard, you have to assign the storage manually for each discovered site.
Multi-Geo Storage Mapping through Notification Message
You can assign multi-geo storage mapping by using a link provided in the notification message.
Procedure
Sign in to Druva Cloud Platform Console and navigate to Microsoft 365 > SharePoint
If the Multi-Geo feature is enabled for the Microsoft 365 tenant, a message that notifies that inSync has discovered sites with new geo locations is displayed.Click the Multi-Geo Storage Mapping link within the message. The Multi-Geo Storage Mapping pop-up appears with a list of all the Microsoft 365 Geo locations enabled in your Microsoft 365 tenant.
On the Multi-Geo Storage Mapping > inSync Storage, click the dropdown to view the list of available inSync storage regions and assign one as per your requirement.
Click Save to save the defined storage mappings.
A notification pop-up appears. Review the message and then click OK.
❗ Important
If you want to automatically assign storage to all the Not Configured sites and the sites that will be discovered in the future, you must enable the Auto assign storage as per Multi-Geo Storage Mapping setting from the Auto Configuration Settings wizard.
If you do not enable the Auto assign storage as per Multi-Geo Storage Mapping setting from the Auto Configuration Settings wizard. you have to assign the storage manually for each discovered site.
6. Click Auto Configuration. On the Auto Configuration Settings wizard, select the checkbox for the Auto assign storage as per Multi-Geo Storage Mapping setting and then click Save. A confirmation pop-up appears. Click Assign Storage, if you want to assign storage to all the Not Configured sites according to the Multi-Geo Storage Mapping.
inSync will now backup sites based on the storage mappings provided.
Use Case: Auto assign storage is enabled, new geo location is discovered but not mapped
In this scenario, for successful backup and restore, you must create and define storage mapping for the new geo location that is discovered.
For more information on how to create Multi-Geo Storage Mapping, see:
Use Case: Microsoft 365 tenant upgraded to Multi-Geo tenant
When a Microsoft 365 tenant has Multi-Geo feature enabled, the tenant is referred to as Multi-Geo tenant. For a Microsoft 365 tenant upgraded to Multi-Geo tenant, backups continue for configured sites as per defined backup settings. For Not Configured sites, Multi-Geo Storage Mapping is required.
In this scenario, after the discovery of sites, the Multi-Geo tenant gets a notification message stating discovered sites with new geo locations. Administrators must create Multi-Geo storage mappings to enable backup and restore for these discovered sites as per required geo locations.
For more information on how to create Multi-Geo Storage Mapping, see:
💡 Tip
All the administrators' activities, such as create and update Multi-Geo Storage Mapping, are displayed on the Audit Trails page. For more information, see Audit Trails page.
Things to consider
Restore to a different site: In this case, only those sites that belong to geo locations of the source site will be searched.
Restore to a new site: In this case. the new site is created at the same geo location as the source site. For example, if the geo location of source site is India, the new site will also be created in India geo location.