--- a/hbase-hadoop2-compat/src/main/java/org/apache/hadoop/hbase/metrics/BaseSourceImpl.java
+++ b/hbase-hadoop2-compat/src/main/java/org/apache/hadoop/hbase/metrics/BaseSourceImpl.java
@@ -45,8 +45,11 @@ public class BaseSourceImpl implements BaseSource, MetricsSource {
     INSTANCE;
     private boolean inited = false;

-    synchronized void init(String name) {
-      if (inited) return;
+    /*
+     * @return whether actual initialization is done by this call
+     */
+    synchronized boolean init(String name) {
+      if (inited) return false;
       inited = true;
       DefaultMetricsSystem.initialize(HBASE_METRICS_SYSTEM_NAME);
       JvmMetrics.initSingleton(name, "");
@@ -55,6 +58,7 @@ public class BaseSourceImpl implements BaseSource, MetricsSource {
       // doing it here. Once BaseSourceSourceImpl is removed, we should do the initialization of
       // these elsewhere.
       GlobalMetricRegistriesAdapter.init();
+      return true;
     }
   }

@@ -109,10 +113,10 @@ public class BaseSourceImpl implements BaseSource, MetricsSource {
     this.metricsJmxContext = metricsJmxContext;

     metricsRegistry = new DynamicMetricsRegistry(metricsName).setContext(metricsContext);
-    DefaultMetricsSystemInitializer.INSTANCE.init(metricsName);
-
-    //Register this instance.
-    DefaultMetricsSystem.instance().register(metricsJmxContext, metricsDescription, this);
+    if (DefaultMetricsSystemInitializer.INSTANCE.init(metricsName)) {
+      //Register this instance.
+      DefaultMetricsSystem.instance().register(metricsJmxContext, metricsDescription, this);
+    }

     // hbase-metrics module based metrics are registered in the hbase MetricsRegistry.
     registry = MetricRegistries.global().create(this.getMetricRegistryInfo());