In this chapter, we’re going to back up your node so you can recover it should your machine ever have a catastrophic failure due to either hardware or software issues etc.
Now we’re going to download the files to your personal machine. Enter the command below in your terminal.
Note: testnode should be changed with your personally chosen username. And yourip should be changed with your machine’s IP. 6677 is the custom port I set up in earlier guides, your custom port may be different.
scp -r -P 6677 testnode@yourip:/home/testnode/.metalgo/staking ~/metal_backup
You should see 3 files now in the metal_backup folder, staker.crt, staker.key and signer.key as seen in the screenshot below. With these files, you can always restore your node. So make sure to secure them in secure locations.
![Screen Shot 2022-09-28 at 4.38.03 PM](https://metalstaking.com/iptoapoa/2022/09/Screen-Shot-2022-09-28-at-4.38.03-PM.png)
Alternatively, you can simply get the files if you have a graphical user interface (GUI), most VPS’s don’t have one but you can always install the Ubuntu GUI and connect to it through a remote desktop application.
Now that you backed up your node, you’re ready to stake as a validator.