Are we using the same piece of software? I have it deployed in production on kubernetes using the bitnami helm chart and everything works like a charm, clustering etc. No need to modify any XML or care about network routes.
We use KC with PostgreSQL as backend data store. Backup is done by backing up the PostgreSQL database.
If you actually want to transport configuration across environments (DEV, QA, PROD), then you want to export realms and have it load by KC on startup or import it using the UI.