Per this link and a discussion I posted there it does not seem that there is a good way for a non-admin to gracefully take a upstream server out of a TCP type farm (no drain function in Stream TCP , but only in HTTP ?). Look for discussion from EVVJSK and replies. https://www.nginx.com/blog/tcp-load-balancing-udp-load-balancing-nginx-tips-tricks/#comment-5377483949 one response said : "Iby jkohut - Ideas and Feature Requests