I had just installed FIM 2010 R2 in a lab environment – All roles on one server, and noticed that the “Forefront Identity Manager Synchronization Service”  Kept stopping, and being set to “Disabled.”

I had installed all of the latest patches for both FIM (4.1.3613.0) and SharePoint (14.0.7140.5000). I saw nothing in the Windows Event log to indicate there was a problem.  The “Synchronization Service Manager on FIM” application would launch fine while the service was running.  All configured management agents would synchronize no problem.  It’s just that – Every so often, the  “Forefront Identity Manager Synchronization Service” would just up and STOP!

After some research, I found this TechNet Blog Post which suggests that SharePoint is the culprit!

Since SharePoint is installed on this server only for the purpose of providing the FIM Portal, I had no need to set up (or otherwise use) the User Profile Service.   Consequently, SharePoint isn’t expecting the Synchronization Service to be in a running state! So, as part of the “Health Analysis Job (Hourly, Microsoft SharePoint Foundation Timer, All Servers)” SharePoint notices the service is running, and disables it!

I verified this by returning the service to the normal Automatic – Running state, and manually kicking off that Timer Job.

Sure enough, the job was stopped! ULS Viewer shows me this also:

See that? – “The SharePoint Health Analyzer found and fixed the following problem: One or more services have started or stopped unexpectedly..”  No details about which service was “started unexpectedly,” but I presume that the “Forefront Identity Manager Synchronization Service” was the culprit.

To prevent this from happening again, I nagivated to “Review Job Definitions” under “Monitoring” in Central Administration, located the  “Health Analysis Job (Hourly, Microsoft SharePoint Foundation Timer, All Servers)” and disabled it.

All seems well at this point in time…

My set of links for FIM installation tips, tricks, procedures, etc:

• https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh332711(v=ws.10).aspx
• http://www.harbar.net/articles/fimportal.aspx
• http://www.toddklindt.com/blog/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=224
• http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/2229.fim-2010-build-overview.aspx
• http://www.fimspecialist.com/fim-portal/installing-fim-2010-r2-sp1-portal-on-sharepoint-foundation-2013/
• https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/76bd6012-f619-4636-8401-74cac8436f1f/fim-sync-service-keeps-disabling?forum=ilm2
• http://www.fimspecialist.com/category/fim-hotixes-service-packs-updates/
• https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj200258(v=ws.10).aspx
• https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh322920(v=ws.10).aspx
• https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh322863(v=ws.10).aspx
• https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj134316(v=ws.10).aspx
• https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh322877(v=ws.10).aspx
• https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh332711(v=ws.10).aspx
• https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh332707(v=ws.10).aspx
• https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh332708(v=ws.10).aspx
• https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh332710(v=ws.10).aspx
• https://fim2010techie.wordpress.com/2012/12/10/synchronizing-active-directory-users/
• http://blogs.msdn.com/b/connector_space/archive/2014/12/30/understanding-the-fim-service-management-agent.aspx
• http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/3610.fim-2010-wiki-articles.aspx