start_instance
Initiate the launch of a Compute Engine instance on Google Cloud Platform by specifying the project ID, zone, and instance name, and receive a status message upon completion.
Instructions
Start a Compute Engine instance.
Args:
project_id: The ID of the GCP project
zone: The zone where the instance is located (e.g., "us-central1-a")
instance_name: The name of the instance to start
Returns:
Status message indicating whether the instance was started successfully
Input Schema
TableJSON Schema
| Name | Required | Description | Default |
|---|---|---|---|
| instance_name | Yes | ||
| project_id | Yes | ||
| zone | Yes |
Implementation Reference
- The core handler implementation for the 'start_instance' tool. It uses the Google Cloud Compute Engine API to start a specified VM instance, polls the operation status until completion, and returns success or error message. The @mcp.tool() decorator registers it with the MCP server using the function name as the tool name and type hints/docstring for schema.
def start_instance(project_id: str, zone: str, instance_name: str) -> str: """ Start a Compute Engine instance. Args: project_id: The ID of the GCP project zone: The zone where the instance is located (e.g., "us-central1-a") instance_name: The name of the instance to start Returns: Status message indicating whether the instance was started successfully """ try: from google.cloud import compute_v1 # Initialize the Compute Engine client client = compute_v1.InstancesClient() # Start the instance operation = client.start(project=project_id, zone=zone, instance=instance_name) # Wait for the operation to complete operation_client = compute_v1.ZoneOperationsClient() # This is a synchronous call that will wait until the operation is complete while operation.status != compute_v1.Operation.Status.DONE: operation = operation_client.get(project=project_id, zone=zone, operation=operation.name.split('/')[-1]) import time time.sleep(1) if operation.error: return f"Error starting instance {instance_name}: {operation.error.errors[0].message}" return f"Instance {instance_name} in zone {zone} started successfully." except Exception as e: return f"Error starting instance: {str(e)}" - src/gcp_mcp/server.py:39-39 (registration)Top-level registration call in the main MCP server file that invokes the compute module's register_tools function, thereby registering the start_instance tool (among others) with the FastMCP server instance.
compute_tools.register_tools(mcp) - src/gcp_mcp/gcp_modules/compute/tools.py:6-6 (registration)Module-level registration function that defines and registers all compute tools, including start_instance via nested @mcp.tool() decorators.
def register_tools(mcp): - Input schema defined by function parameters (project_id: str, zone: str, instance_name: str) and output str, along with detailed docstring describing args and return value, used by MCP for tool schema generation.
def start_instance(project_id: str, zone: str, instance_name: str) -> str: """ Start a Compute Engine instance. Args: project_id: The ID of the GCP project zone: The zone where the instance is located (e.g., "us-central1-a") instance_name: The name of the instance to start Returns: Status message indicating whether the instance was started successfully """