This article is for Google Workspace Enterprise Plus administrators.
As an administrator, you can use data regions to store your covered Google Workspace data in a specific geographic location. Your location options are the United States, Europe, or No preference.
Users who don't have a supported edition aren't covered by data region policies—even if you apply a data region policy to their organizational unit.
For more information about the types of data covered, go to What data is covered by a data region policy?
The AppSheet account requirements and steps to enable AppSheet data regions are different from those described in this section. For more information, see Manage AppSheet data residency.
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Before you begin: Consider tradeoffs
Before you choose a region for your data, consider the following points:
- Selecting a specific region doesn't improve performance or fine-tune your network or data access.
- Sometimes, users outside the region where their data is located might experience higher latency. Latency could happen when users:
- Edit shared objects in real time across regions
- Share files, such as documents, with someone outside their region
- Travel internationally
- In rare cases, when a data region has been selected, users outside that region might lose access to the data due to events beyond Google’s control (for example, natural disasters).
- If an administrator decides to include processing in their data regions policy, some advanced features might become unavailable. Learn more about advanced settings for data regions.
Note: Only Google Enterprise Plus customers can specify a processing location.
Data region conflicts
When users send direct messages from different data regions, their data is stored in both regions. For example:
|
User A’s region |
User B’s region |
Direct messages data region |
|
USA |
EU |
USA/EU |
|
Any region |
EU |
Any region/EU |
Set a data region policy
Step 1: Set up the organizational structureNote: If you use only one data region for all of your users, you can skip this step.
You can choose one data region for some of your users, or different data regions for specific departments or teams:
- To set the data region policy by department—Put user accounts in an organizational unit.
- To set the data region policy for users across or with departments—Put users in a configuration group.
- To set a data region policy for specific organizational units and groups—You need Enterprise Data regions, which is included in Google Workspace Enterprise Plus. For instructions on upgrading your service, see Switch to Enterprise Plus.
Learn about our data center locations.
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Sign in to your Google Admin console.
Sign in using your administrator account (does not end in @gmail.com).
-
In the Admin console, go to MenuThis option appears only if your license includes Data regions.
Data
Compliance
- Click Region, and then:
- Click Data at rest
- Click Data processing
Note: To apply the data region to everyone, leave the top organizational unit selected. Otherwise, select an organizational unit or a configuration group.
- Click Data at rest
If you set up an organizational unit or group, you might be able to Inherit/Override an organization or Unset a group.
To learn how to apply a data region policy for Google Vault, go to Choose a location for your Vault export data.
With Google Workspace Enterprise Plus, you can view the status of your data regions storage within 24–48 hours of making a change to your data region policy. If you have Google Workspace Assured Controls, you can view the status of your storage and processing in an advanced report.
To view data regions move progress:
-
Sign in to your Google Admin console.
Sign in using your administrator account (does not end in @gmail.com).
-
In the Admin console, go to Menu
Reporting
In the basic report, you can view the status of your region’s data at rest. The advanced report includes data at rest plus data processing broken down by region and by application.
For more information on the status of your data, go to View your data regions status reports.
