Use Director to shut down or disconnect peripheral devices. Doing this will not cause the overall system to malfunction. When the device or application is reconnected or restarted, communication will be re-established automatically.
If, for maintenance reasons, you want to temporarily take an individual analytical instrument off-line, you do this by right-clicking on the instrument in the Overview page and selecting Take Instrument Offline in the pop-up menu. This will cause the instrument to complete the processing of any vials it is currently dealing with but will not accept any more. When the current vial is fully processed the lab2lab software sub-unit that controls it will shut down.