Delete an Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) node pool

This article outlines node pool deletion in Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS), including what happens when you delete a node pool and how to delete a node pool.

What happens when you delete a node pool?

When you delete a node pool, the following resources are deleted:

• The virtual machine scale set (VMSS) and virtual machines (VMs) for each node in the node pool
• Any node instances in the node pool along with any pods running on those nodes

Delete a node pool

Important

Keep the following information in mind when deleting a node pool:

• You can't recover a node pool after it's deleted. You need to create a new node pool and redeploy your applications.

Azure CLI

Delete a node pool using the az aks nodepool delete command.

az aks nodepool delete \
    --resource-group <resource-group-name> \
    --cluster-name <cluster-name> \
    --name <node-pool-name>

Azure PowerShell

Delete a node pool using the Remove-AzAksNodePool cmdlet.

$params = @{
    ResourceGroupName = '<resource-group-name>'
    ClusterName       = '<cluster-name>'
    Name              = '<node-pool-name>'
}
Remove-AzAksNodePool @params

Azure portal

To delete a node pool in Azure portal, navigate to the Settings > Node pools page for the cluster and select the name of the node pool you want to delete. On the Node Pool | Overview page, you can select Delete to delete the node pool.

To verify that the node pool was deleted successfully, use the kubectl get nodes command to confirm that the nodes in the node pool no longer exist.

Ignore PodDisruptionBudgets (PDBs) when removing an existing node pool

If your cluster has PodDisruptionBudgets that are preventing the deletion of the node pool, you can ignore the PodDisruptionBudget requirements by setting --ignore-pod-disruption-budget to true. To learn more about PodDisruptionBudgets, see:

• Plan for availability using a pod disruption budget
• Specifying a Disruption Budget for your Application
• Disruptions

1. Delete an existing node pool without following any PodDisruptionBudgets set on the cluster using the az aks nodepool delete command with the --ignore-pod-disruption-budget flag set to true:

   az aks nodepool delete \
       --resource-group myResourceGroup \
       --cluster-name myAKSCluster \
       --name nodepool1
       --ignore-pod-disruption-budget true
   

2. To verify that the node pool was deleted successfully, use the kubectl get nodes command to confirm that the nodes in the node pool no longer exist.

Next steps

For more information about adjusting node pool sizes in AKS, see Resize node pools.