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We have an Office 365 account. In the Data location of the Organisation profile we have it set to Australia for Exchange, however when we send emails they are sent from a server in Hong Kong (x-originating-ip: [104.44.118.13]).

I connected to office 365 using PowerShell and executed Get-OrganizationConfig and the AllowedMailboxRegions and DefaultMailboxRegion both only contain AUS but the OriginatingServer value started with HKNPR04... with an IP address in Hong Kong.

Is it possible to update the OriginatingServer so that it uses Australian mail servers?

Thanks.

Jake
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1 Answers1

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According to Microsoft Online Services privacy notice, Where is my data?

Microsoft has a regionalized datacenter strategy. The customer’s country or region, which the customer’s administrator inputs during the initial setup of the services, determines the primary storage location for that customer’s data.

It is not possible to change the tenant location (as well as its name) after the initial setup. It is mentioned at sign-up that the country is locked to determine the services you can use, the billing currency and the closest datacenter.

You have chosen correctly, since Hong Kong is listed in Australian region locations Microsoft has elected to disclose to the general public. For detailed information, explore interactive datacentermap.

However, that is not the whole story. For example, Microsoft uses DNS geolocation for picking up the nearest datacenter to an user travelling abroad. While the data storage maintains in the original region, some caching occurs during that. It is also likely that new services at first exists in US datacenters only, e.g. Yammer has been hosted globally as of May 2015, now covered by the O365 Trust Center.

In most cases I wouldn't worry: it is a mutual benefit to have the most suitable and fastest connection available. Microsoft has own interconnecting networks and way more experience in maintaining global datacenters than most of its customers have.

Esa Jokinen
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  • Great explanation. Thanks. How do MS handle some organisations that have legal requirements to keep data within their country? Is that just dealt with on special request, or the organisation has to find a different cloud solution? – Jake May 02 '17 at 22:39
  • As Microsoft doesn't have datacenters on every country, that would be impossible to guarantee in general. Microsoft uses regions instead of countries. Most of related questions have answers in [Regulatory compliance F.A.Q.](https://www.microsoft.com/online/legal/v2/?docid=31&langid=en-us). – Esa Jokinen May 03 '17 at 10:17
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    If your requirements are particularly stringent, you can go to MSFT Dedicated services, which would be a step below GOV or MIL. Most Office 365 tenants are in Shared Multitenant, and subject to be distributed per Microsoft's policies. – blaughw May 05 '17 at 00:25
  • http://o365datacentermap.azurewebsites.net/ not found – Kiquenet Jun 03 '22 at 06:58