Scale-Down
Cordon, drain, delete. Billing stops.
When a node has been empty for ttlSecondsAfterEmpty (configured in NodePool), the NodePool controller marks the NodeClaim for deletion. The NodeClaim controller then: cordons the node (no new pods) → drains it (evicts remaining workloads) → deletes the Kubernetes node object → calls the provider API to delete the VM. Billing stops.