Afi multi-geo capabilities help you comply with data residency requirements and backup your Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace data to multiple Afi geo-regions. For example, a multinational company with branches in the United States and Europe can backup users' data to the relevant Afi data-center region based on the users' country. Supported Afi regions include the USA, Canada, the EU, the United Kingdom, and Australia.
As part of the multi-region backup support, Afi provides out-of-the-box integration with Microsoft 365 multi-geo tenants. During Microsoft 365 onboarding, Afi detects if the tenant has the Microsoft 365 multi-geo feature enabled and helps configure a geo-location-based resource mapping for such multi-geo tenants.
For Google Workspace tenants and Microsoft 365 tenants without the native multi-geo feature, Afi offers a multi-region backup as well, but it requires a manual resource mapping instead of the automatic set up.
Note: This feature is not available in the standard Afi SaaS backup subscription for tenants without Microsoft 365 multi-geo support. Please contact sales@afi.ai for more details.
How to setup a multi-region backup account with Afi
To set up a multi-region backup account with Afi, you need to add your Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace domain to several Afi regions and then configure the geo-locations mapping for each Afi data-center region.
To start a multi-geo setup, create an account at https://app.afi.ai and follow the wizard that will help you add your Google Workspace or Microsoft 365 domain to one of the Afi regions. If your Microsoft 365 tenant has the native multi-geo feature enabled, Afi will automatically detect it and enable the multi-geo backup feature. Alternatively, please contact support@afi.ai to enable the multi-geo backup after your domain is added to the first Afi region.
After choosing a region to store the backup data and clicking on the Start button, the service will perform a quick account setup. Then it will redirect you to the Multi-geo tab in the Afi backup panel and prompt you to finish configuration by selecting what Microsoft 365 geo-locations should be backed up to the current Afi data-center region.
Example: the screenshot below shows how to map a group of Microsoft 365 geo-locations (Europe/Middle East/Africa, France, and Germany) to Afi EU region: .
After you chose geo-locations mapping for the current Afi region, click Apply to finish the setup (in case of a Google Workspace domain or Microsoft 365 domain without native multi-geo support, please click Apply without selecting any geo-locations).
After the geo-locations mapping is configured, the service will start domain resources synchronization, and you can add your domain to other Afi data-center regions. To add another region, open the dropdown at the top of the application screen, click the Add data source button, and follow the same procedure.
If the multi-geo feature is enabled in your Microsoft 365 tenant, Afi synchronizes the domain resources in each region based on the geo-locations mapping, so each Afi data-center location contains only a regional subset of resources (users, sites, teams) from your domain. Please note, that for the correct setup, geo-location mappings in each Afi data-center region should not overlap. For example, if you mapped the United Kingdom geo-location to the Afi UK region, do not map UK geo-location to the Afi EU data center region.
For tenants without the native Microsoft 365 multi-geo feature, you will need to configure resources for the backup in each data source manually. To make it easier, you can use Organizational units or AAD Groups for backup mass management (for example, you can create AAD groups for EU Users and US Users and backup each group to the relevant Afi data center).
How to reconfigure a geo-locations mapping
You can check or reconfigure your geo-locations mapping for each Afi region on Service -> Settings -> Multi-geo tab (use the dropdown at the top of the screen to switch between the regions). Please note that for large domains, it takes some time to perform the resource synchronization after the mapping change.
After the synchronization, resources that no longer belong to the selected Afi region based on the new geo-locations configuration will be marked as Archived. According to the configured retention rules, their backups will be preserved in the corresponding Afi region.
Example: Suppose you mapped the United Kingdom and France geo-locations to backup to Afi EU region during the initial setup, but later decided to add Afi UK region to the setup and remove the United Kingdom resources from Afi EU region. After the reconfiguration, the Afi will mark the United Kingdom resources as Archived in Afi EU data center and preserve their backup data. The same resources in a newly added Afi UK data source will be backed up from scratch.
Multi-geo setup limitations
Self-service backup access (backup access for end-users) is only available for tenants with native Microsoft 365 multi-geo support. For other tenants, backup access is available only for account and access group admins.