Cannot get user profile service application to work using the guide on harbar.net?

Guys,

I'm hoping someone on here can help with this, as I've really been round the houses with this.

Anyway I've attempted to provision the UPS Service App probably 4 times now, each time learning more and more about the common problems.

The last time, I rolled my VM back to just after the installation of SharePoint 2010 binaries, and then ran the PCW and created the farm again from scratch.

I then followed this guide: http://www.harbar.net/articles/sp2010ups.aspx

Everything seemed to work perfectly well, after provisioning UPS I did a couple of iisresets as welll as execadmsvcjobs until I could see the timer job that provisions the FIM services.

These services came up and the following errors were reported in the event log:

The first one is lies, I did start the service and verified it was running, anyway for completeness:

"There are no instances of the User Profile Service started on any server in this farm. Ensure that at least one instance is started on an application server in the farm using the Services on Server page in Central Administration."

This one I have seen constantly on my Farm through various builds:

"An exception occurred when trying to issue security token: An error occurred while receiving the HTTP response to http://localhost:32843/SecurityTokenServiceApplication/securitytoken.svc/actas. This could be due to the service endpoint binding not using the HTTP protocol. This could also be due to an HTTP request context being aborted by the server (possibly due to the service shutting down). See server logs for more details.."

And this one repeats and then gets suppressed.

"An exception occurred when trying to issue security token: The HTTP service located at http://localhost:32843/SecurityTokenServiceApplication/securitytoken.svc/actas is too busy. ."

Now the interesting ones:

The Forefront Identity Manager Service cannot connect to the SQL Database Server. 

The SQL Server could not be contacted. The connection failure may be due to a network failure, firewall configuration error, or other connection issue. Additionally, the SQL Server connection information could be configured incorrectly. 

Verify that the SQL Server is reachable from the Forefront Identity Manager Service computer. Ensure that SQL Server is running, that the network connection is active, and that the firewall is configured properly. Last, verify the connection information has been configured properly. This configuration is stored in the Windows Registry.

What's going on here? I know the box can talk to my SQL server or SharePoint itself wouldn't work.

Then I get this one after the previous repeats once more:

A caller has attempted to import a transaction from a remote system, but MSDTC is currently configured to disallow inbound transaction manager communication on machine 'RD-13'. Please review the MS DTC configuration settings.

The harbar.net article suggests you don't need to touch MSDTC unless you are using a named SQL instance (which I am not?)

THen I get this error:

Microsoft.ResourceManagement.Service: System.ArgumentException: Unable to open database connection

Parameter name: connectionString ---> System.Transactions.TransactionManagerCommunicationException: Network access for Distributed Transaction Manager (MSDTC) has been disabled. Please enable DTC for network access in the security configuration for MSDTC using the Component Services Administrative tool. ---> System.Runtime.InteropServices.COMException (0x8004D024): The transaction manager has disabled its support for remote/network transactions. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x8004D024)

   at System.Transactions.Oletx.IDtcProxyShimFactory.ReceiveTransaction(UInt32 propgationTokenSize, Byte[] propgationToken, IntPtr managedIdentifier, Guid& transactionIdentifier, OletxTransactionIsolationLevel& isolationLevel, ITransactionShim& transactionShim)

   at System.Transactions.TransactionInterop.GetOletxTransactionFromTransmitterPropigationToken(Byte[] propagationToken)

   --- End of inner exception stack trace ---

   at System.Transactions.Oletx.OletxTransactionManager.ProxyException(COMException comException)

   at System.Transactions.TransactionInterop.GetOletxTransactionFromTransmitterPropigationToken(Byte[] propagationToken)

   at System.Transactions.TransactionStatePSPEOperation.PSPEPromote(InternalTransaction tx)

   at System.Transactions.TransactionStateDelegatedBase.EnterState(InternalTransaction tx)

   at System.Transactions.EnlistableStates.Promote(InternalTransaction tx)

   at System.Transactions.Transaction.Promote()

   at System.Transactions.TransactionInterop.ConvertToOletxTransaction(Transaction transaction)

   at System.Transactions.TransactionInterop.GetExportCookie(Transaction transaction, Byte[] whereabouts)

   at System.Data.SqlClient.SqlInternalConnection.GetTransactionCookie(Transaction transaction, Byte[] whereAbouts)

   at System.Data.SqlClient.SqlInternalConnection.EnlistNonNull(Transaction tx)

   at System.Data.ProviderBase.DbConnectionInternal.ActivateConnection(Transaction transaction)

   at System.Data.ProviderBase.DbConnectionPool.GetConnection(DbConnection owningObject)

   at System.Data.ProviderBase.DbConnectionFactory.GetConnection(DbConnection owningConnection)

   at System.Data.ProviderBase.DbConnectionClosed.OpenConnection(DbConnection outerConnection, DbConnectionFactory connectionFactory)

   at System.Data.SqlClient.SqlConnection.Open()

   at System.Workflow.Runtime.Hosting.DbResourceAllocator.OpenNewConnection(Boolean disallowEnlist)

   at System.Workflow.Runtime.Hosting.DbResourceAllocator.Init(String connectionStr)

   --- End of inner exception stack trace ---

   at Microsoft.ResourceManagement.Workflow.Hosting.HostActivator.ActivateHost(ResourceManagementWorkflowDefinition workflowDefinition)

   at Microsoft.ResourceManagement.Workflow.Hosting.WorkflowManager.StartWorkflowInstance(Guid workflowInstanceIdentifier, KeyValuePair`2[] additionalParameters)

Then I get this one again:

The Forefront Identity Manager Service cannot connect to the SQL Database Server.........

Anyway, after performing the install and regardless of all of these errors, I was unable to open the management website for the User Profile Service App, just got 'An error has occurred' and nothing useful in ULS using the granularity of logging I have at the moment.

I then tried the next day (this morning) and the admin site worked OK, but I had the following errors in the log:

"Failure trying to synch web application ab74c460-6106-410e-93df-bd43dff7f414, ContentDB 676bde83-bdab-4a1c-b71e-2296295a9684  Exception message was Microsoft.Office.Server.UserProfiles.UserProfileApplicationNotAvailableException: No User Profile Application available to service the request. Contact your farm administrator.

   at Microsoft.Office.Server.Administration.UserProfileApplicationProxy.get_ApplicationProperties()

   at Microsoft.Office.Server.Administration.UserProfileApplicationProxy.get_PerfmonInstanceHandle()

   at Microsoft.Office.Server.UserProfiles.ContentDBSynchronizer..ctor(ELogType logType, SPContentDatabase cdb, SPJobState jobState)

   at Microsoft.Office.Server.UserProfiles.WSSProfileSyncJob.Execute()"