File Search (vector stores) not working in West Europe region, undocumented

[JeroenvdV]

I'm unable to enable the File Search Tool on a Foundry Agent (classic) in the West Europe region. It is available in at least the Sweden region though. The documentation mentions that the feature is not available in 2 regions but those are different ones: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/ai-foundry/agents/how-to/tools-classic/file-search?view=foundry-classic

As this is undocumented, does that mean it is a bug and can be expected to be fixed?

If it is currently unsupported, is it scheduled to be supported in the future and if so, what is known about the timeline for that?

Thank you for your help!

[Tvde1]

+1 We also want to use this in westeurope, instead of having our data in sweden central.

[olejhar]

I've also run into this when deploying the Standard agent environment, from one of the templates found in the foundry-samples repo. I am not planning to use the File Search tool, but apparently the vector stores are also fundamental to the Agent service itself, not only to the File Search. The exact same deployment works in Norway East, but not in West Europe, with the same "Unable to fetch vector stores" error.

Using the REST API to send a request to {endpoint}/vector_stores/?api-version=v1 will yield a 400 Bad request for a West Europe deployment, with a "Vector stores are not supported in this region." message, while the same request to a Norway East will yield a 200 OK.

I sent a support request through the Azure Portal, and the reply I got was:

To clarify vector stores are not exclusive to the File Search tool. They are a foundational retrieval dependency used by the Foundry Agent platform itself, including agent initialization and knowledge management.

Although you are not using File Search and plan to use Azure AI Search for RAG, the agent runtime and portal still attempt to access vector stores as part of loading and managing the agent. This happens before any tool is attached, which explains why the error appears immediately after opening the agent.

This is why:
• The behavior works in Norway East, where vector stores are available
• It fails in West Europe, where vector stores are currently unavailable, even though the Agent Service itself is supported

As a result, agent updates and knowledge attachment are blocked in West Europe due to this underlying regional limitation, not due to your configuration.

@JeroenvdV I guess you also see the error about the vector stores even before you attempt to create/attach File Search?