If you’ve ever been asked “but where does our data actually live?” in a compliance review, you’re not alone. For admins running Jira or Confluence in the cloud, Atlassian data residency is the feature that answers that question.
What is Atlassian Data Residency?
Atlassian data residency gives you control over where your product data is stored at rest. Rather than your data landing wherever Atlassian’s infrastructure happens to route it, you can pin it to a specific geographic region.
Atlassian defines data residency as the ability to choose where in-scope app data is hosted for your organization. It applies to the content your teams create and work with every day: issues, pages, attachments, comments, etc.
Supported products include:
- Jira Software
- Jira Service Management
- Jira Product Discovery
- Confluence
- Loom
It’s worth noting that this feature is specific to Atlassian cloud. If you’re on Data Center, you already control where your servers live — data residency is cloud’s equivalent answer to that same concern.
Available Data Residency Regions
One common misconception is that Atlassian’s data residency options are limited to the US and EU. In reality, 11 regions are now available:
- United States
- European Union
- United Kingdom
- Australia
- Canada
- Germany
- India
- Japan
- Singapore
- South Korea
- Switzerland
Atlassian added seven new regions in under a year, which reflects how seriously the company is investing in enterprise and regulated-industry customers.
What counts as “in region”? According to Atlassian’s documentation, data residency covers your product content at rest — the data your teams actively create and store. Atlassian also protects backup data in the same region, using the snapshot feature of Amazon RDS (Relational Database Service) to create automated daily backups of each RDS instance (retained for 30 days).
What isn’t covered: some transient or in-flight data, Atlassian’s internal operational infrastructure, and data accessed during support interactions. Residency is a meaningful control, but it’s one layer of a broader compliance posture, not a catch-all.
You can check your current data location any time in Atlassian Admin under Organization settings > Data residency. See cloud data hosting regions for a breakdown of how Atlassian structures its cloud infrastructure by region.
Atlassian Data Residency and GDPR
It’s a common assumption that GDPR requires EU data to be stored in the EU. Strictly speaking, that’s not what the regulation mandates — GDPR governs how personal data is processed and transferred, not precisely where it sits. That said, EU data residency makes GDPR compliance conversations significantly simpler.
When your data is pinned to an EU region, you can more straightforwardly demonstrate to your DPO and legal team that personal data isn’t leaving the EEA unnecessarily. It also reduces reliance on transfer mechanisms like Standard Contractual Clauses (SCCs) for routine data at rest.
For cross-border transfers that do occur, Atlassian provides a Data Processing Addendum and SCCs, ensuring that any transfer of personal data outside the EEA has a lawful basis. Their GDPR compliance resources include self-certification under the EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework.
The honest answer is that data residency handles the “where does it sit” question well. The broader GDPR picture — lawful basis, data subject rights, processor agreements — still requires the full Atlassian Trust Center documentation and your own legal review. But residency removes one of the biggest compliance blockers admins face when making the case for cloud internally.
How to Enable and Configure Data Residency
Configuration lives in Atlassian Admin under Organization settings > Data residency. You select a target region per product, and Atlassian handles the migration.
A few things to plan for, per Atlassian’s guidance on moving data:
- Downtime: Moving your data to a new region involves downtime for the affected products, up to 24 hours depending on the size of your instance. Schedule this carefully.
- Search re-indexing: After the migration, search may be temporarily unavailable and can take up to 3 days to fully re-index depending on data volume.
- One region per product: You select a region at the product level. If you move Jira, the standalone Assets app moves with it automatically.
- Changes are possible later: You can request to move to a different region after the initial pin, but each change requires a new migration window — so it’s worth getting the decision right the first time.
For detailed steps on managing data residency for your products, including how to initiate a migration and monitor its progress, Atlassian’s support documentation walks through the full process.
Atlassian Data Residency vs. Staying on Data Center for Compliance
Some admins stick with Data Center specifically because they want direct control over where their data lives. It’s an understandable position — but it’s worth pressure-testing the assumption.
On Data Center, you control the physical server location. What you also own: patching, infrastructure management, uptime, and maintaining your own compliance certifications. As Atlassian phases out Data Center, the operational risks are growing, and regulatory bodies increasingly expect software to be actively maintained and secure.
Atlassian cloud with data residency gives you a different kind of control: you choose the region, and Atlassian maintains ISO 27001, SOC 2 Type II, and other certifications on your behalf. As cloud migration trends in 2026 show, more regulated-industry organizations are reaching the same conclusion: the compliance posture of a well-configured cloud environment often meets or exceeds what teams can realistically maintain on-premise.
Recent analysis of Atlassian cloud security in 2026 reinforces this: the security controls available in Atlassian cloud, combined with regional data pinning, address the vast majority of what compliance frameworks require in practice.
For most organizations, Atlassian Cloud is the stronger long-term compliance position — not because Data Center is bad, but because Cloud has caught up and Data Center is being left behind.
Ready to Move to Cloud with Confidence?
Atlassian data residency removes one of the most common blockers admins face when building the internal case for cloud: “Our data must sit in a particular location for compliance reasons.”
Now it can. Eleven regions across the globe, clear coverage for what’s pinned and what isn’t, GDPR-ready documentation, and a configuration path that lives entirely within Atlassian Admin.
If you’re ready to plan a migration — or just want a clearer picture of what cloud readiness looks like for your specific setup — our cloud migration assessment is the right starting point.