Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Documentation

Managing Regions

This topic describes the basics of managing your region subscriptions. For more information about regions in Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, see Regions and Availability Domains. For information about Platform Services regions, see Managing Platform Services Regions.

The Home Region

When you sign up for Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, Oracle creates a tenancy for you in one region. This is your home region. Your home region is where your IAM resources are defined. When you subscribe to another region, your IAM resources are available in the new region, however, the master definitions reside in your home region and can only be changed there.

Important

Your home region contains your account information and identity resources. It is not changeable after your tenancy is provisioned. If you are unsure which region to select as your home region, contact your sales representative before you create your account

Resources that you can create and update only in the home region are:

  • Users
  • Groups
  • Policies
  • Compartments
  • Dynamic groups
  • Federation resources

When you use the API to update your IAM resources, you must use the endpoint for your home region. (See What is the tenancy home region? How do I find my tenancy home region?) IAM automatically propagates the updates to all regions in your tenancy.

When you use the Console to update your IAM resources, the Console sends the requests to the home region for you. You don't need to switch to your home region first. IAM then automatically propagates the updates to all regions in your tenancy.

When you subscribe your tenancy to a new region, all the policies from your home region are enforced in the new region. If you want to limit access for groups of users to specific regions, you can write policies to grant access to specific regions only. For an example policy, see Restrict admin access to a specific region.

Note

IAM Updates Are Not Immediate Across All Regions

When you create or update an IAM resource, be aware that you need to allow up to several minutes for the changes in your home region to become available in all regions.

Provisioning SaaS Applications and Geo-Regions

SaaS applications are provisioned in the geo-region specified on your order.

After creating a cloud account to add your subscription, a Default identity domain is created in the home region. For SaaS applications, the home region isn’t the provisioning location. SaaS applications are provisioned in the Data Center region (sometimes called the geo-region) specified on your order. For example, the North America geo-region includes three regions (Ashburn, Phoenix, and Toronto).

Note

Depending on the SaaS application, the application user credentials might also be stored at the same home region as the Default identity domain.

In some cases, the home region displayed in the Console may be different than the Data Center Region that you selected or is identified in your order for your Services. The information stored in your home region consists of only cloud services administrator credentials that are shared with Oracle to create and manage the Oracle Cloud account and is information that is required to log in to your account. Your Oracle Application services production and backup data remain permanently stored by Oracle only in the Data Center Region that is identified in your order.

For more information about identity domains, see Managing Identity Domains

Using the Console to Manage Infrastructure Regions

To view the list of infrastructure regions

Open the Console, open the Region menu, and then click Manage Regions. A list of the regions offered by Oracle Cloud Infrastructure is displayed. Regions in the same realm that you have not subscribed to provide a button to create a subscription. See About Regions and Availability Domains for tables listing the commercial regions and realms.

To subscribe to an infrastructure region
  1. Open the Console, open the Region menu, and then click Manage Regions. The list of regions available to your tenancy is displayed. Your home region is labeled.
  2. Locate the region you want to subscribe to and click Subscribe.
    Note

    It could take several minutes to activate your tenancy in the new region.

    Remember, your IAM resources are global, so when the subscription becomes active, all your existing policies are enforced in the new region.

    To switch to the new region, use the Region menu in the Console. See Switching Regions for more information.

You cannot unsubscribe from a region.

Region FAQs

Can an individual user subscribe to a region?

A region subscription is at the tenancy level. An administrator can subscribe the tenancy to a region. All IAM polices are enforced in the new region, so all users in the tenancy will have the same access and permissions in the new region.

Can I see my existing resources in the new region?

When you select a region in the Console, you are shown a view of the resources in your selected region. Most cloud resources (instances, VCNs, buckets, etc.) exist only in a specific region, so you only see them when you select the region where they were created. The exception is IAM resources: compartments, users, groups, and policies are global across all regions. See also Working Across Regions.

How do my service limits apply to the new region?

Service limits can be scoped to the tenant level, the region level, or the availability domain level. When you subscribe to a new region, you get access to the region and its availability domains. Service limits apply accordingly. The service limits page lists the scope of each resource limit.

Can I restrict access to a specific region?

Yes. You can write policies that grant permissions in a specified region only. For an example policy, see Restrict admin access to a specific region.

Can I change my home region?

No. Oracle assigns your home region and you can't change it. See also: What is the tenancy home region? How do I find my tenancy home region?