# gce instance start and stop existing instances (not create and destroy)

**URL:** <https://forum.ansible.com/t/gce-instance-start-and-stop-existing-instances-not-create-and-destroy/19260>\
**Category:** Ansible Project\
**Created:** [September 14, 2015, 2:44pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/gce-instance-start-and-stop-existing-instances-not-create-and-destroy/19260 "2015-09-14T14:44:04Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Tongqing\_Qiu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/43a26b/32.png) [@Tongqing\_Qiu](https://forum.ansible.com/u/Tongqing_Qiu)\
**Post date:** [September 14, 2015, 2:44pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/gce-instance-start-and-stop-existing-instances-not-create-and-destroy/19260/1 "2015-09-14T14:44:04Z")

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GCE now provides the function to stop and start the instances. Does ansible gce module provides that function?  
I am not sure the meaning of “active, present, absent, delete” in the following document.  
[http://docs.ansible.com/ansible/gce\_module.html](http://docs.ansible.com/ansible/gce_module.html)

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**Author:** ![Richard\_Corfield](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/a4c791/32.png) [@Richard\_Corfield](https://forum.ansible.com/u/Richard_Corfield)\
**Post date:** [November 12, 2015, 4:50pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/gce-instance-start-and-stop-existing-instances-not-create-and-destroy/19260/2 "2015-11-12T16:50:59Z")

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I have been trying to determine this myself and I have not successfully started a terminated instance with the Ansible gce module.

The titles of the Ansible module pages do seem to imply that the EC2 has a higher level of functionality than the GCE module:

[ec2 - create, terminate, start or stop an instance in ec2](http://docs.ansible.com/ansible/ec2_module.html)  
[gce - create or terminate GCE instances](http://docs.ansible.com/ansible/gce_module.html)

Richard