Initialization and termination of the distribution services are tied to activation and deactivation of distribution configuration data. A node without active distribution configuration cannot provide distributed services to a cluster. When distribution configuration is activated the following steps are taken to initialize distribution:
Mark the local node state as starting
Start dynamic discovery service if enabled
Start network listeners
Start keep-alive server
Mark the local node state as active
After initialization completes, the node is automatically part of the cluster. It can now provide access to distributed objects or provide high-availability services to other nodes in the cluster.