Choose a geographic location for your data

Supported editions for this feature: Frontline Starter and Frontline Standard; Business Standard and Business Plus; Education Standard and Education Plus; Enterprise Standard and Enterprise Plus; Enterprise Essentials Plus. Compare your edition

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.

On this page

• Before you begin
• Choose where your data is located
  • Step 1: Set up the organizational structure
  • Step 2: Choose where your data is located
  • Step 3: View the status of your data regions settings
• Related topics

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 Workspace 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

Expand section | Collapse all

Step 1: Set up the organizational structure

Supported editions for this feature: Education Standard and Education Plus; Enterprise Plus; Enterprise Essentials Plus. Compare your edition

Note:  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 within departments—Put users in a configuration group.

Step 2: Choose where your data is located

Learn about our data center locations.

Before you begin: If needed, learn how to apply the setting to a department or group.

1. Sign in to your Google Admin console.

   Sign in using your administrator account (does not end in @gmail.com).

2. In the Admin console, go to Menu  DataComplianceData regions.

   This option appears only if your license includes Data regions.

3. Supported editions for this feature: Education Standard and Education Plus; Enterprise Plus; Enterprise Essentials Plus.

   (Optional) To apply the setting only to some users, at the side, select an organizational unit (often used for departments) or configuration group (advanced). Show me how

   Group settings override organizational units. Learn more

4. Click Region, and then:
   1. Click Data at restselect a region: No Preference, United States, or Europeclick Save.

   2. Supported editions for this feature: Enterprise Plus, Enterprise Essentials Plus. 

      Click Data processingcheck the Process data at your selected data at rest region box click Save.
5. Click Save. Or, you might click Override for an organizational unit.

   To later restore the inherited value, click Inherit (or Unset for a group).

Step 3: View the status of your data regions settings

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 status:

1. Sign in to your Google Admin console.

   Sign in using your administrator account (does not end in @gmail.com).

2. In the Admin console, go to Menu  ReportingReportsApps ReportsData regions.

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.

Related topics

• Overview: About Google Workspace data regions
• Data covered by data regions
• Set up advanced settings for data regions
• View your data regions status reports
• Choose a location for your Vault export data
• Google Workspace legal and compliance resources