You must shut down the domain to ensure that users do not modify the domain while you are migrating the domain configuration. For example, if the domain is running when you are backing up the domain configuration, users can create new services and objects. Also, if you do not shut down the domain and you restore the domain configuration to a different database, the domain becomes inoperative. The connections between the gateway nodes and the domain configuration database become invalid. The gateway nodes shut down because they cannot connect to the domain configuration database. A domain is inoperative if it has no running gateway node.