Cassandra removing node : is it possible to stop decommission and lauch removenode?

Question

I have an issue with a cassandra node on a 10 nodes cluster. I first launched a decommission on that node to remove it from the cluster. The decommission is currently active but the load on this node is such that it takes an infinite time and I would like to go faster.

What I thought to do was to stop this node and launch a removenode from another one. The DataStax documentation explains that we should use decommission or removenode depending on the up/down status of the node. But there is no information about removenode while targeted node has already leaving status.

So my question is: Is it possible to launch a removenode of a stopped node while this one has already a leaving status?

Answer 1

So my question is: Is it possible to launch a removenode of a stopped node while this one has already a leaving status?

I had to do this last week, so "yes" it is possible.

Just be careful, though. At the time, I was working on bringing up a new DC in a non-production environment, so I didn't care about losing the data that was on the node (or in the DC, for that matter).

What I thought to do was to stop this node and launch a removenode from another one.

You can do exactly that. Get the Host ID of the node you want to drop, and run:

$ nodetool removenode 2e143c2b-0571-4c5d-22d5-9a2668648710

And if that gets stuck, ctrlc out of it, and (on the same node) you can run:

$ nodetool removenode force