Always On shared network location To use the wizard from SSMS, we had to provide full access to "everyone" to the shared network location.

Is there a way to avoid this and just limit the access to a specific user? 

Already tried the service account but that seems not to be working.

The message received from the wizard is:


\\Hostname\sync' is not a valid shared network location.
(Microsoft.sqlserver.Management.hadr Tasks)
Well it took a while but finaly found it myself. Besides the service account it also requires full access for the user of SSMS. Sounds obvious probably and indeed I thought about it earlier but since the account was already in the list of administrators and this group already had full access to the shared volume I thought it would have been enough. So what was required was just adding the SSMS user/group and service account to the advanced sharing of the SYNC folder.