Securely shutdown a node from kubernetes cluster

Always drain the node before removing it:

kubectl drain $NODE

Draining evicts every pod in the node and cordons it, so no new pods will be scheduled in it.

You can use these parameters to 'force' draining, overriding some restrictions:

kubectl drain $NODE --force=true --delete-local-data=true --ignore-daemonsets=true

Find further info here:

CodeHunter