Preview — pending review
This reference is generated from the platform API contract and is still under review. Operations, fields, and descriptions can change before publication.
Start a stopped instance
Powers on a STOPPED Instance (Start action in the detail header, row menu, and bulk-selection
bar of the instances table). The hypervisor boots the VM; on success the instance reaches
status=ACTIVE with powerState=RUNNING and its IPs/extensions become live again. The resulting
state is immediately available to subsequent reads.
Validation: instance must exist and be visible → 404 NOT_FOUND; current status must permit
start — the UI only offers Start for STOPPED instances; starting from BUILD/DELETING/ACTIVE or
another incompatible state → 409 CONFLICT.
Async & state: Asynchronous (202) returning an Operation. State path: STOPPED → (taskState
powering_on) → ACTIVE/RUNNING on success, or ERROR on failure. resource.updated SSE frames
with kind=instance carry status/powerState patches; the console invalidates instance queries on
each frame.
Errors: 401 UNAUTHENTICATED; 403 FORBIDDEN (reader/billing roles cannot run power actions);
404 NOT_FOUND for unknown instance; 409 CONFLICT when the current state does not permit start
(including host-capacity shortfalls surfaced as CAPACITY_UNAVAILABLE on the same status);
500 INTERNAL.
Idempotency/Concurrency: Idempotency-Key is optional (recommended) — the UI can retry
and bulk-apply this
action; replaying returns the original Operation. Starting an instance whose start is already in
flight returns that Operation (no duplicate boot). No If-Match for power actions.
bearerTokenAuthorizationBearer <token>An API token (pc_live_…) or a service-account key (sak_live_…), created in Identity & Access Management and sent as Authorization: Bearer <token>. Requests are rate limited per credential and per tenant: every response carries X-RateLimit-Limit, X-RateLimit-Remaining and X-RateLimit-Reset, and a refused request gets 429 RATE_LIMITED with Retry-After.
scopeId*stringOpaque ownership+authorization scope resolving to tenant + subscription + project.
instanceId*stringIdentifier of the compute instance.
Idempotency-Key?stringOptional; recommended for safe retries. When sent, the same key+body within 24h replays the original result and the same key with a different body is 409 CONFLICT; keys are unique per tenant. When an API token or service-account (bearer) caller omits it, the request is applied once with no replay protection (a retry may apply it again). A console session gets one from the edge.
uuidStart accepted; returns the tracking Operation.
application/json- response
A long-running operation record. GET /operations/{operationId} returns its current state.
id*stringOperation identifier, unique platform-wide.
action*stringCanonical action id that started this operation, e.g. compute.instance.create.
state*OperationStateState machine for long-running operations. PENDING and RUNNING are transitional; the rest are terminal.
"PENDING""RUNNING""SUCCEEDED""FAILED""CANCELLED"resourceKind?|Kind of the target resource (matches RealtimeEvent.kind), null for resource-less actions.
resourceId?|Identifier of the target resource; null until the resource is allocated.
resourceName?|Human-readable name of the target resource captured when the operation was opened; null when unknown or the resource has been deleted (clients fall back to resourceId).
principalId?|Subject id (user id/email or service-account id) of the actor that initiated this operation, captured at the create chokepoint; null on internal/worker paths with no request-scoped principal or for historical rows. This is the real actor the Activity feed renders.
sourceIp?|Source IP address of the request that initiated this operation; null when unavailable (internal/worker paths, historical rows).
progressPercent?|Best-effort progress; null when the action does not report progress.
0 <= value <= 100error?|nullPopulated only when state is FAILED (or CANCELLED with partial rollback notes).
warning?|nullNon-fatal degradation recorded on an operation that still SUCCEEDED - the primary action completed but something explicitly requested could not be delivered (e.g. publicIp was requested at instance create but no floating IP could be assigned). On a CANCELLED create it reports that the provider resource had already been created and was kept (live and billed until deleted; details.disposition = left_in_place). Same code+message shape as error so clients render both uniformly; null when the operation ran without degradation.
startedAt?|When the worker began executing; null while PENDING.
finishedAt?|When a terminal state was reached; null while transitional.
createdAt*stringupdatedAt*stringcurl -X POST "https://example.com/scopes/string/compute/instances/string/actions/start"{ "id": "string", "action": "string", "state": "PENDING", "resourceKind": "string", "resourceId": "string", "resourceName": "string", "principalId": "string", "sourceIp": "string", "progressPercent": 0, "error": { "code": "string", "message": "string", "field": "string", "details": {}, "retryable": false }, "warning": { "code": "string", "message": "string", "field": "string", "details": {}, "retryable": false }, "startedAt": "string", "finishedAt": "string", "createdAt": "string", "updatedAt": "string"}