Restoring NameNode metadata If both the NameNode and the secondary NameNode were to suddenly go offline, you can restore the NameNode. Add a new host to your Hadoop cluster. Add the NameNode role to the host. Make sure it has the same hostname as the original NameNode. Create a directory path for the NameNode name.dir (for example, /dfs/nn/current), ensuring that the permissions are set correctly. Copy the VERSION and latest fsimage file to the /dfs/nn/current directory. Run the following command to create the md5 file for the fsimage. md5sum fsimage > fsimage.md5 Start the NameNode process. Parent topic: Back up HDFS metadata