Scheduled Refresh Fails When Gateway Machine is Turned Off

Hi Anonymous ,

Why It's Failing:
When your laptop is turned off, the gateway service is unavailable, so Power BI Service can't reach your on-prem MySQL data via ODBC. That’s why refreshes fail.

Answer to your main question:
“Is it true that scheduled refreshes will only work when the machine where the gateway is installed is turned ON and connected to the internet?”

Yes. 100% true. Power BI Service relies on the installed gateway to act as a bridge between the cloud and your on-premise data source. If that bridge is down (your laptop is off), refresh fails.

Solutions & Best Practices:

1. Install the Gateway on a Server or Always-On Machine
The best and most reliable approach:

Move the gateway to a dedicated server or cloud VM (e.g., Azure VM, AWS EC2, or an always-on on-prem machine).

This ensures your refreshes run whether or not your personal laptop is on.

2. Use a Clustered Gateway Setup (Optional Advanced)
If you have multiple machines:

Set up a gateway cluster.

If one machine (like your laptop) is offline, another machine in the cluster can still run the refresh.

This adds redundancy and high availability.

More info: Configure high availability for the on-premises data gateway

3. Switch to a Cloud-Based Data Source (if applicable)
If your MySQL DB can be:

Migrated to a cloud version (e.g., Azure Database for MySQL),

Or exposed securely with firewall rules/VPN for Power BI Service,

…then you can eliminate the need for a gateway altogether.

4. Schedule Refreshes During Laptop Online Hours (Not recommended long-term)
If nothing else is feasible right now:

Set the refresh times after you're usually logged in, but it's risky and manual.

How to Move the Gateway to a New Machine:
Install On-Premises Gateway on the new machine/server.

During setup, choose “Migrate, restore, or takeover an existing gateway”.

Sign in using the same account as on Power BI Service.

Reassign the data source in Power BI Service to the new gateway instance.

Please mark this post as solution if it helps you. Appreciate Kudos.