Fun fact: ~50 mil QUIL have been lost forever because people forgot to back up their keys :-o
After 30 minutes that then node has been running, it should have generated your keys and config files correctly. Use WinSCP or Termius SFTP feature to navigate to the root/ceremonyclient/node/.config folder.
You may have to enable visibility for hidden files in WinSCP if you don't see the .config folder.
After your node begins to work you need to keep updated backups of your whole /ceremonyclient/node/.config folder, because it contains all the files that hold your rewards.
.config folder contents (list)
Config.yml
contains your private key as well as all the configs for your node. Your peerID and rewards are connected to the key in this file - DO NOT LOSE IT
Keys.yml
contains other keys, but can be generated automatically by the node if you only have the Config.yml
"Store" folder
contains all the files for the proofs generated by the node. Your rewards are connected to these proofs so you need to keep update backups of this folder
MIGRATIONS
This file is necessary if you move the node to another machine
REPAIR, RELEASE_VERSION, SELF_TEST
These files have various functions but do not need to be backed up
Personally and for maximum security, I back up my keys.yml and config.yml files locally, while I keep synced updated backups of all the other files remotely via StorJ. Some people just back up their entire .config folder, though.
Another thing I do, before shutting down a node, is I stop it and do a final full backup. This is because although you can back up your store folder while the node is running, the store file that is being written to won't be backed up, so you risk losing some rewards.
If you need to migrate the node elsewhere, after installing the new node from scratch, you will need to migrate your entire root/ceremonyclient/node/.config folder to your new node . See also Migrating the node to a new server
