Removing node from Datastax Cluster

Question

My current cluster contain 6 SearchGraph nodes and replication factor is 2.

Datacenter: SearchGraph
=======================
UN  192.168.8.1  469 MiB     1            ?       936a1ac0-6d5e-4a94-8953-d5b5a2016b92  rack1
UN  192.168.8.2  427.71 MiB  1            ?       3f41dc2a-2672-47a1-90b5-a7c2bf17fb50  rack1
UN  192.168.8.3  431.27 MiB  1            ?       29f8fe44-3431-465e-b682-5d24e37d41d7  rack2
UN  192.168.8.4  480.73 MiB  1            ?       1f7de531-ff51-4581-bdb8-d9a686f1099e  rack2
UN  192.168.8.5  498.9 MiB   1            ?       27d37833-56c8-44bd-bac0-7511b8bd74e8  rack2
UN  192.168.8.6  882.4 MiB   1            ?       0822145f-4225-4ad3-b2be-c995cc230830  rack1

I am planning to remove exiting 3 instance from cluster. I need only 3 instance in my cluster. Can any one specify the steps to be followed with out losing data.

Answer 1

Official documentation describes this in good details. Basically, all you need is to run nodetool decommission on corresponding node. But you need to do it one by one, not all together.