What are the tickets you are dealing with asking you to do?
If you are replacing the card then you should observe anti-static precautions.
If this is Sun hardware then you need to note what the
local-mac-address? eeprom(1m) setting is set to because if it is set to true then it is using its own mac address if it is set to false then it is using the system's mac address.
On the operating system side then taking the network port down using
ifconfig(1m) will break your network connection to the system, not good it it is in a data centre miles away from your office!