Nodes can be gracefully removed from a cluster by stopping the node. When a node is stopped all active partitions on the node failover to the next highest priority replica and all replication to the node is terminated. If there is no replica node defined for a partition that is active on the node being disabled, the partition is abandoned.
The following steps are required to remove a node from a cluster:
Stop the node.
Remove the node.
A node is removed from service using these commands.
epadmin --servicename=A.X stop node epadmin --servicename=A.X remove node