My gut instinct is for an atomic approach as well. The only use case where continuing after partial failure is conceptually valid is when the persistent state contains a complete representation of the state; transient state is just there to provide a hot cache. 1) There has to be a persistent state transfer or a shared cache loader. 2) No passivation. Then, if you're going to fall back and rely on persistent state, you have to be sure you can remove any in-memory state that may have been integrated before the failure. If associated state fails, you have to clear transient as well. View the original post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&p=3971456#... Reply to the post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=posting&mode=reply&a...