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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
NameRequiredDescriptionDefault
instance_nameYes
project_idYes
zoneYes

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)}"
  • 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)
  • 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
        """

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