Move Windows 365 Cloud PCs to Another Region

Microsoft lets IT Admins move Windows 365 Cloud PCs to another region. It is now possible to move a Windows 365 cloud pc from one Datacenter region to another by editing provisioning policy that was used to provision the Cloud PCs.

According to Microsoft, the capability to move Windows 365 Cloud PCs from one Datacenter region to another was introduced in Summer 2023 and has been added to public preview in June 2023. All Windows 365 enterprise customers can currently access the feature in preview and move Cloud PCs to a new location in Intune console.

The best time to move Cloud PCs is over the weekend to make sure the impact to users is minimized. You may also create manual restore points for Cloud PCs before you move them. Cloud PCs will be shutdown during the region change, so you should notify your users before the move so that they can save their work and sign-off. Note that Windows 365 admins will only be able to move up to 100 Cloud PCs at once, according to Microsoft.

Have a look at the below guides for getting started with Cloud PCs in Windows 365

Reasons for moving Cloud PCs to another region?

Your employees might occasionally need to move from one place to another based on requirements from organization. Another possibility is that a Microsoft Datacenter will open up more frequently in a neighbourhood closer to your employees. These are a few situations where moving your Windows 365 Cloud PCs from one Microsoft Datacenter to another is necessary.

For instance, a user who is working in the US West Coast, moves to an EU location. Since the user moves to an EU location, it is a smarter decision to utilize a Microsoft Datacenter closer to the user to avoid network latencies etc. That’s when you change the location of Cloud PCs to a new region.

Steps to Move Windows 365 Cloud PCs to Another Region

We will now go through the steps of moving a Windows 365 cloud PC from one Datacenter region to another.

Step 1: Determine the location of your Cloud PC

Before you decide to change the location of your Cloud PC, you must first determine where your Cloud PC is hosted. Windows 365 Business Cloud PCs are created in a location based on the billing address country/region of your organization. The billing address is used to determine two things:

Whether Windows 365 is available for purchase in that region.
Where Windows 365 Cloud PCs are created.

An Azure network connection (ANC) allows Cloud PCs to be created in your organization’s Azure Virtual Network. To find out the region where your Windows 365 Cloud PCs are hosted, use these steps:

Sign in to Microsoft Intune admin center.
Navigate to Devices > Windows 365 > Azure Network Connection.
The Region tab shows the location where your Cloud PC is hosted in Azure.

Step 2: Check if Windows 365 Business is available in your country/region

To find out if Windows 365 can be moved to a different location/region, follow these steps:

In your internet browser, go to Microsoft 365 and Office 365 International Availability.
Scroll down to the Windows 365 section.
Your country/region is supported if it’s listed in the Countries and Regions column.

Step 3: Edit Cloud PC Provisioning Policy

Once you have determined your Cloud PC location and the availability of the region, you must edit an existing provisioning policy applied to Windows 365 Cloud PCs and change the geography and region.

First, sign in to Microsoft Intune admin center and navigate to Devices > Windows 365 > Provisioning Policies. Select a Cloud PC provisioning policy that you have assigned to your Cloud PCs. Edit the provisioning policy by clicking Edit option as shown in the below screenshot.

Under the join type details section, configure the Cloud PC Geography and Region. For instance, I will be changing the location of Cloud PC from East US to India for testing. So, my geography is set to India and Region is set to Automatic (recommended). Click Next.

Note: In the above steps, you can change from one Azure Network Connection to another Azure Network Connection, or move from MS Hosted Networking to Azure Network Connection.

On the Review+Save tab, review the changes, especially the Geography and Region. To update the Cloud PC provisioning policy, click on Update.

We have successfully updated the provisioning policy after updating the new location of Cloud PCs. A notification pops up that highlights the policy update is completed successfully. In the next step, we will apply the region change that will relocate or move Windows Cloud PCs to another Datacenter region as per the provisioning policy.

Policy to Update Location of your Cloud PCs

Step 4: Apply region change to move Cloud PCs to another location

In this step, we will apply region change to existing Cloud PCs so that the Windows 365 Cloud PCs are relocated to a new location as per the provisioning policy.

In the Intune portal, navigate to Devices > Windows 365 > Provisioning Policies. Select the Cloud Provisioning Policy and use the option “Apply region change to existing Cloud PCs“.

You’ll see the following message when you apply region change, “Users will be notified that their Cloud PC will be shutdown within the next 10 minutes. Any unsaved work will be lost.” Select Apply. Cloud PCs will start to migrate from one region to another.

Move Windows 365 Cloud PCs to Another Region

While moving Cloud PCs to another region, they are inaccessible to users. To confirm if the process of moving Cloud PCs has been started, you can review the cloud pc status in the Intune console. We see that status of Cloud PCs has been changed from “provisioned” to “Moving region or network.”

At the same time, users can see a notification in Windows 365 portal and Windows 365 App regarding an admin is updating the cloud pc and CPC can be used after updating is finished.

Step 5: Confirm the Location Change of Cloud PCs

Once the Windows 365 Cloud PCs have moved to a new region, you’ll notice that status of Cloud PCs is shown as ‘Provisioned‘.

Select the Cloud PC and the Overview tab shows “Move: Completed“. In addition, under the Device action status, we see more details about the Cloud PC being moved to a new region along with Date and Time stamp.