Lync Server 2010 MP Bug Alert: ‘Consolidator Module Failed Initialization’

Issue
A customer of mine runs a SCOM 2012 R2 environment and has many servers and workloads in place, all monitored by SCOM. So far so good. Also a SINGLE Lync 2012 Server is in place and being monitored by SCOM.

But soon the Alert came in: ‘Consolidator Module Failed Initialization’.  Even though I had seen this Alert in the past on a Lync 2010 server, the fix I found back then didn’t work. Simply because the fix for a WMI memory issue, didn’t apply here since it was already outdated by newer file versions. So something else was at play here.

Cause
Some time ago I was on an assignment for a customer running many many Lync Server environments, among them many Lync 2010 servers as well. And NO WHERE this issue popped up. So what was different here?

Soon I found it. As it turned out, Lync isn’t really made to be installed on a single server. For a POC perhaps – even then I would not recommend it since you can’t test all the functionality of Lync – or a lab. But not for full production.

So in environments with just ONE Lync server this issue pops up! And the Alert is caused by just ONE single Monitor which is configured in the wrong way. But more about that one later on.

This is what the OpsMgr event log on the single Lync 2012 server told me:

Log Name:      Operations Manager Source:        Health Service Modules Event ID:      11112 Task Category: None Level:         Error Keywords:      Classic User:          N/A Computer:      XYZ.domain.com Description: The Microsoft Operations Manager Consolidator Module failed to initialize because the specified compare count is less than the minimum allowed. Compare count value: 1 Minimum value allowed: 2 One or more workflows were affected by this.  Workflow name: Microsoft.LS.2010.Monitoring.UnitMonitor.TimerResetEvent.PDP_PDP_IPADDRESS_NOT_CONFIGURED_IN_NCS Instance name: LS Policy Decision Point Component [XYZ.domain.com] Instance ID: {D97677B9-BA09-426C-2FFF-EE8CB1F6A774} Management group: ABC

In this case the compare count value and the minimum value allowed triggered an Alert for me. When comparing items, you require at least TWO of them, You can’t compare just ONE item with itself!

So apparently this specific Unit Monitor was trying to compare at least TWO items but only found ONE (understandable since it’s only ONE Lync 2010 Server) and failed because of it!

Now my search on the internet became much simpler because I knew now what to look for. And soon on the TechNet Forums I found this topic where I found the cause of it all, as described by ZYEngineer: ‘…On simple deployments of Lync, such as mine, there is no explicitly defined Region, Site, Subnet, Region Link or Region Route.  There's no need since there's only one front-end server.  This monitor is looking for the PDP IP Address in Network Configuration Settings (PDP_PDP_IPADDRESS_NOT_CONFIGURED_IN_NCS). …’

Tada!

Solution
So the only solution here is to disable the Unit Monitor. After some searching in the XML code of this MP I located it, it’s Unit Monitor: IP addresses missed from Network Configuration Settings targeted against LSPolicy Decision Point Component.

As it turned out, this Unit Monitor has a serious issue (allowing a compare count of 1, DUH!) causing it to crash the SCOM Console when trying to look at the properties of it:

And the details show the cause of this Console crash:

So the SCOM Console detects the defect of this Unit Monitor without any issue, so why did it slip through QC before this MP was published?

GLADLY, an Override wasn’t an issue at all. So I disabled this Unit Monitor and some minutes later this error in the event log on the Lync 2010 Server and the related SCOM Alert were gone.