Path to repo not working

[xvschneider (Valerian)]

Hello there. I'm experiencing some issues with backing up my documents - when the path.repo points to a fileshare location, ES won't start as a service.

My setups is the following: 3 Windows Server 2012 R2 machines, one act as a load balancer, and the other two have Elastic Search data on them.

I followed the official documentation, so I modified on all machines the elasticsearch.yml file to include the path repo:

path.repo: ['\\\\Path\\To\\FileShare']

Then I try to restart each machine.
When I start as a service, ES stops immediately. I check the logs and get this error:

[2016-11-08 06:45:58,576][WARN ][bootstrap ] unable to install syscall filter: syscall filtering not supported for OS: 'Windows Server 2012 R2'
[2016-11-08 06:46:00,060][ERROR][bootstrap ] Exception
java.lang.IllegalStateException: Unable to access 'path.repo' (\\Path\To\FileShare)
at org.elasticsearch.bootstrap.Security.addPath(Security.java:229)
at org.elasticsearch.bootstrap.Security.addFilePermissions(Security.java:209)
at org.elasticsearch.bootstrap.Security.createPermissions(Security.java:184)
at org.elasticsearch.bootstrap.Security.configure(Security.java:105)
at org.elasticsearch.bootstrap.Bootstrap.setupSecurity(Bootstrap.java:196)
at org.elasticsearch.bootstrap.Bootstrap.setup(Bootstrap.java:167)
at org.elasticsearch.bootstrap.Bootstrap.init(Bootstrap.java:285)
at org.elasticsearch.bootstrap.Elasticsearch.main(Elasticsearch.java:35)
Caused by: java.nio.file.NotDirectoryException: \\Path\To\FileShare
at org.elasticsearch.bootstrap.Security.ensureDirectoryExists(Security.java:253)
at org.elasticsearch.bootstrap.Security.addPath(Security.java:227)
... 7 more
Suppressed: java.nio.file.FileAlreadyExistsException: \\Path\To\FileShare
at sun.nio.fs.WindowsException.translateToIOException(WindowsException.java:81)
at sun.nio.fs.WindowsException.rethrowAsIOException(WindowsException.java:97)
at sun.nio.fs.WindowsException.rethrowAsIOException(WindowsException.java:102)
at sun.nio.fs.WindowsFileSystemProvider.createDirectory(WindowsFileSystemProvider.java:504)
at java.nio.file.Files.createDirectory(Files.java:674)
at java.nio.file.Files.createAndCheckIsDirectory(Files.java:781)
at java.nio.file.Files.createDirectories(Files.java:727)
at org.elasticsearch.bootstrap.Security.ensureDirectoryExists(Security.java:250)
... 8 more

It only happens when ES starts as a service. Does anybody else experience this issue?
Thank you!

[dadoonet (David Pilato)]

path.repo must be a dir not a file.

[xvschneider (Valerian)]

Thanks for your reply, although it is a directory. It works just fine when I start elasticsearch.bat instead of using the service manager, so I'm guessing it's a permissions issue.