User Profile Service fails to start ('ERR_CONFIG_DB' / SynchronizeMIIS encounters an exception)

For all those people that have spent an extensive amount of time trying to get the User Profile Service started.

You have all followed Spencer's fantastic article https://www.harbar.net/articles/sp2010ups.aspx as well TechNet https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee721049.aspx and yet your User profile service fails to start i.e. status returns to "Stopped".

You will see errors in the ULS as below:
User Profile Application: SynchronizeMIIS encounters an exception: System.NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object.

or

ILM Configuration: Error 'ERR_CONFIG_DB'.

The farm I have been working on is Server 2012 R2, SharePoint 2013 (with the latest CU's installed) and SQL 2012.

The fix I applied was to take it back to the basics and make sure that all Pre-Requisites are correct.
What I found was that I have SQL 2012 Native client (to match my version of SQL) installed but the pre-requisites clearly say SQL 2008 R2 Native client is required.

I installed SQL 2008 R2 Native Client as a side by side to SQL 2012 Native client i.e. both are now installed on all servers in the farm and I then successfully started the User Profile Sync Service.

I have managed to replicate this on several farms.