Deploying a Rust MCP Server to Amazon LightSail

The rmcp crate and standard Rust libraries are used to build a basic MCP Server in Rust. This MCP Server is then built and deployed to AWS LightSail and validated locally with Gemini CLI

More MCP Demos?

Yes sir. Ferris the Crab demands it.

Why not just use Python?

Python has traditionally been the main coding language for ML and AI tools. One of the strengths of the MCP protocol is that the actual implementation details are independent of the development language. The reality is that not every project is coded in Python- and MCP allows you to use the latest AI appt roaches with other coding languages.

What is this Tutorial Trying to Do?

Building on previous tutorials, the goal is to extend a Rust MCP server with basic support for deployment to AWS.

What is Rust?

Rust is a high performance, memory safe, compiled language:

Rust

Rust provides memory safe operations beyond C/C++ and also can provide exceptional performance gains as it is compiled directly to native binaries.

So is this the real Slim Shady?

So what is different about this lab compared to all the others out there?

This is one of the first deep dives into deploying a Rust based MCP server hosted on AWS. The Amazon LightSail service was targeted for ease of setup and deployment.

Rust Setup

Instructions to install Rust are available here:

Getting started

For a Linux like environment the command looks like this:

curl — proto ‘=https’ — tlsv1.2 -sSf https://sh.rustup.rs | sh

Rust also depends on a working C compiler and OpenSSL setup. For a Debian 12 system — install the basic tools for development:

sudo apt install build-essential
sudo apt install libssl-dev
sudo apt install pkg-config
sudo apt-get install libudev-dev
sudo apt install make
sudo apt install git

Gemini CLI

If not pre-installed you can download the Gemini CLI to interact with the source files and provide real-time assistance:

npm install -g @google/gemini-cli

Testing the Gemini CLI Environment

Once you have all the tools and the correct Node.js version in place- you can test the startup of Gemini CLI. You will need to authenticate with a Key or your Google Account:

▝▜▄ Gemini CLI v0.33.1
    ▝▜▄
   ▗▟▀ Logged in with Google /auth
  ▝▀ Gemini Code Assist Standard /upgrade no sandbox (see /docs) /model Auto (Gemini 3) | 239.8 MB

AWS CLI

The AWS CLI provides a command line tool to directly access AWS services from your current environment. Full details on the CLI are available here:

Install Docker, AWS CLI, and the Lightsail Control plugin for containers

You can version check the tool after installation:

xbill@penguin:~/gemini-cli-aws/mcp-lightsai-rust-aws$ aws --version
aws-cli/2.34.43 Python/3.14.4 Linux/6.6.99-09128-g14e87a8a9b71 exe/x86_64.debian.12

Amazon Lightsail

Amazon Lightsail is an easy-to-use virtual private server (VPS) provider and cloud platform designed by AWS for simpler workloads, offering developers pre-configured compute, storage, and networking for a low, predictable monthly price. It is ideal for hosting small websites, simple web apps, or creating development environments.

More information is available on the official site here:

Amazon's Simple Cloud Server | Amazon Lightsail

And this is the direct URL to the console:

https://lightsail.aws.amazon.com/ls/webapp/home/containers

The Lightsail console will look similar to:

Setup the Basic Environment

At this point you should have a working Rust environment and a working Gemini CLI installation. All of the relevant code examples and documentation is available in GitHub.

The next step is to clone the GitHub repository to your local environment:

cd ~
git clone https://github.com/xbill9/gemini-cli-aws

Then run init.sh from the cloned directory.

The script will attempt to determine your shell environment and set the correct variables:

source init.sh

If your session times out or you need to re-authenticate- you can run the set_env.sh script to reset your environment variables:

source set_env.sh

Variables like PROJECT_ID need to be setup for use in the various build scripts- so the set_env script can be used to reset the environment if you time-out.

Refresh the AWS credentials:

xbill@penguin:~/gemini-cli-aws/mcp-lightsail-rust-aws$ aws login --remote
Browser will not be automatically opened.

xbill@penguin:~/gemini-cli-aws/mcp-ligthsail-rust-aws$ source save-aws-creds.sh 
Exporting AWS credentials...
Successfully saved credentials to .aws_creds
The Makefile will now automatically use these for deployments.

Finally install the packages and dependencies:

~/gemini-cli-aws/mcp-lightsail-rust-aws 
make install

Build The Rust MCP Server

Some background information on building and configuring a Rust MCP server is here:

Building a Secure HTTP Transport MCP Server with Rust, and Gemini CLI

The mcp-lightsail-rust subdirectory has the complete Rust MCP server in one subdirectory.

Minimal System Information Tool Build

The first step is to build the basic tool directly with Rust. This allows the tool to be debugged and tested locally before adding the MCP layer.

First build the tool locally:

xbill@penguin:~/gemini-cli-aws/mcp-lightsail-rust-aws$ make
Building the Rust project...
   Compiling mcp-lightsail-rust-aws v1.0.0 (/home/xbill/gemini-cli-aws/mcp-lightsail-rust-aws)
    Finished `dev` profile [unoptimized + debuginfo] target(s) in 7.67s
xbill@penguin:~/gemini-cli-aws/mcp-lightsail-rust-aws$ 

then lint check the code:

xbill@penguin:~/gemini-cli-aws/mcp-lightsail-rust-aws$ make lint
Linting code...
    Finished `dev` profile [unoptimized + debuginfo] target(s) in 0.61s
xbill@penguin:~/gemini-cli-aws/mcp-lightsail-rust-aws$ 

and run local tests:

xbill@penguin:~/gemini-cli-aws/mcp-lightsail-rust-aws$ make test
Running tests...
    Finished `test` profile [unoptimized + debuginfo] target(s) in 0.22s
     Running unittests src/main.rs (target/debug/deps/mcp_lightsail_rust_aws-926af5aee1927183)

running 1 test
test tests::test_greeting ... ok

test result: ok. 1 passed; 0 failed; 0 ignored; 0 measured; 0 filtered out; finished in 0.00s

The last step is to build the production version:

xbill@penguin:~/gemini-cli-aws/mcp-lightsail-rust-aws$ make release
Building Release...
   Compiling mcp-lightsail-rust-aws v1.0.0 (/home/xbill/gemini-cli-aws/mcp-lightsail-rust-aws)
    Finished `release` profile [optimized] target(s) in 43.31s
xbill@penguin:~/gemini-cli-aws/mcp-lightsail-rust-aws$ 

The MCP server can be started locally:

xbill@penguin:~/mcp-adk-rust/mcp-cloudrun-rust$ make start
Building Release...
    Finished `release` profile [optimized] target(s) in 0.14s
Starting the MCP server...
Server started with PID 1569

Then Gemini CLI is used as a MCP client:

🟢 local-rust - Ready (1 tool)
  Tools:
  - mcp_local-rust_greeting

The MCP tool can then be tested:

> mcp_local-rust_greeting local

╭────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────╮
│ Action Required │
│ │
│ ? greeting (local-rust MCP Server) {"message":"local"} │
│ │
│ MCP Server: local-rust │
│ Tool: greeting │
│ │
│ MCP Tool Details: │
│ (press Ctrl+O to expand MCP tool details) │
│ Allow execution of MCP tool "greeting" from server "local-rust"? │
│ │
│ 1. Allow once │
│ 2. Allow tool for this session │
│ 3. Allow all server tools for this session │
│ ● 4. Allow tool for all future sessions ~/.gemini/policies/auto-saved.toml │
│ 5. No, suggest changes (esc) │
╰────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────╯

✦ The mcp_local-rust_greeting tool was executed with the message "local", returning:
  "Hello World MCP! local"

Deploy To LightSail

A basic Dockerfile is used to build an image for deployment:

xbill@penguin:~/gemini-cli-aws/mcp-lightsail-rust-aws$ make deploy
Building the Docker image...
[+] Building 5.3s (15/15) FINISHED docker:default
 => [internal] load build definition from Dockerfile 0.0s

Get the Endpoint:

xbill@penguin:~/gemini-cli-aws/mcp-lightsail-rust-aws$ make endpoint
https://mcp-lightsail-rust-aws.6wpv8vensby5c.us-east-1.cs.amazonlightsail.com/

Check Gemini MCP settings:

{
    "mcpServers": {
    "aws-lightsail-rust": {
      "httpUrl": "https://mcp-lightsail-rust-aws.6wpv8vensby5c.us-east-1.cs.amazonlightsail.com/mcp"
    },
    "local-rust": {
      "httpUrl": "http://127.0.0.1:8080/mcp"
    }
  }
}

The service will be visible on the LightSail console:

Final Test

Start up Gemini CLI and check the MCP server status:

🟢 aws-lightsail-rust - Ready (1 tool)
  Tools:
  - mcp_aws-lightsail-rust_greeting

> mcp_aws-lightsail-rust_greeting Hello LightSail!

  Executing Lightsail Greeting: Executing the greeting tool for Amazon Lightsail Rust MCP server.

╭────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────╮
│ ✓ greeting (aws-lightsail-rust MCP Server) {"message":"Hello LightSail!"} │
│ │
│ Hello World MCP! Hello LightSail! │
╰────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────╯

✦ The mcp_aws-lightsail-rust_greeting tool returned:

  Hello World MCP! Hello LightSail!

Summary

A complete HTTP transport MCP server was built using Rust. This application was tested locally with Gemini CLI. Then, the entire solution was deployed to AWS LightSail. The remote MCP server was validated with Gemini CLI locally.