Once you start the primary database, the Replication agent starts as well. If you have configured the Replication server on the target machine with the defer-agent-startup property and it has not terminated, it will connect to this agent during its next connection attempt. (The Replication server might terminate if the amount of time you specified in the defer-agent-startup property or the connect-timeout property has expired.)

To restart the Replication server if it has terminated, use the following command:

dsrutil secondary-db-name -C restart server

Once the Replication server and agent begin communicating, secondary replication will begin.

As shown in the following figure, all secondary database activity that has taken place since the online backup was performed will be replicated to the primary database, as it is now the target database.

Figure 1. Secondary replication occurs