Thinking about it a bit more, and particularly about the comment in the user forum thread to: 1. remove any shutdown hooks in cache.stop() if this is called externally/manually 2. add some intelligence in cache.stop() to detect if it is being called by the shutdown hook and don't remove the shutdown hook in this case With the above, do we then need any sort of manual override regarding the registration of shutdown hooks? Can we not then make do with *always* registering a shutdown hook, and then have the hook unregister if cache.stop() is called manually, or by an MBean server/microcontainer? Saves adding a configuration element. View the original post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&p=4117041#... Reply to the post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=posting&mode=reply&a...