Installing the Exchange 2010 Correlation Engine on a Non-Management Server and without a console

These is an issue with the current Exchange 2010 Correlation Engine – which causes it to fail on SCOM 2012 or 2016 Management Servers.  Jimmy wrote about these here:

https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/jimmyharper/2015/04/15/exchange-2010-correlation-engine-not-generating-alerts/

So one remedy to this – is to install the Correlation Engine (CE) on a non-management server role.  Either on a dedicated reporting server, or stand-alone server in the environment.  This is advisable – because the CE uses a LOT of memory – and we don’t want it consuming it all from the SCOM Management server.   One of the problems with this – is that the CE checks to ensure the SCOM 2007 (or later) console is installed when you kick off the MSI.  If it is missing – you get:

The problem with installing the SCOM 2012 Console, is that you end up with the wrong version of the SDK binaries that the CE is expecting.  To work around this – we can do a simple “hack”.  The alternative to this would be to install the SCOM 2007R2 console.  Many customers will not want to install this old console for no other reason.

The Exchange2010ManagementPackForOpsMgr2007-x64.msi is looking in the registry for:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREMicrosoftMicrosoft Operations Manager3.0Setup]
“UIVersion”=”6.0.6278.0”

We can simply create that “Setup” registry key, then a Reg String value for “UIVersion” with “6.0.6278.0” as the data value.

This will allow us to installed the CE.

Once installed – browse to the Program FilesMicrosoftExchange Serverv14Bin directory.

Edit the Microsoft.Exchange.Monitoring.CorrelationEngine.exe.config file.

Here is the default file config:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<configuration>
    <runtime>
        <generatePublisherEvidence enabled="false"/>
    </runtime>
    <appSettings>
        <add key="OpsMgrRootManagementServer" value="localhost" />
        <add key="OpsMgrLogonDomain" />
        <add key="OpsMgrLogonUser" />
        <add key="ManagementPackId" value="Microsoft.Exchange.2010" />
        <add key="CorrelationIntervalInSeconds" value="300" />
        <add key="CorrelationTimeWindowInSeconds" value="300" />
        <add key="AutoResolveAlerts" value="true" />
        <add key="EnableLogging" value="true" />
        <add key="MaxLogDays" value="30" />
        <add key="LogVerbose" value="false" />
        <add key="MaxLogDirectorySizeInMegabytes" value="1024" />
    </appSettings>
</configuration>

Modify the value for OpsMgrRootManagementServer to a management server (Might as well use your RMSe server).  Save the file.  UAC might block you from editing this file, if so – open notepad as elevated.

Next – open the Services.msc control applet, and configure the service “Microsoft Exchange Monitoring Correlation”

Set this service to run as your SDK account, or a dedicated service account that has rights to the SCOM SDK as a SCOM Administrator.

Your CE Service will be stuck in a restart loop.  It is crashing because of an exception – it is missing the SDK binaries.

Now – following the BLOG POST referenced above – unzip the three SCOM 2007 files in the blog attachment to the Program FilesMicrosoftExchange Serverv14Bin directory:

The errors should go away – and in the Application event log – you should see the following sequence:

Log Name:      Application
Source:        MSExchangeMonitoringCorrelation
Event ID:      700
Description:
MSExchangeMonitoringCorrelation service starting.

Log Name:      Application
Source:        MSExchangeMonitoringCorrelation
Event ID:      722
Description:
MSExchangeMonitoringCorrelation successfully connected to Operations Manager Root Management Server.

Log Name:      Application
Source:        MSExchangeMonitoringCorrelation
Event ID:      701
Description:
MSExchangeMonitoringCorrelation service started successfully.