Ah, so I am not alone here :) Ok so, off the top of my head, I can see 3 possible core cache solutions to this problem. 1) Have an option that enables lazy wrapper style serialization (like you are suggesting) using the TCL. The reason this should be optional is that any wrapper serialization usage has greater cost than a region CL (double buffering + additional synchronization). 2) Add a serialization manager which allows app registered callbacks when deserializing/serializing an Object. This is essentially the reverse of a region CL. The callback would be passed various node information that could be used to locate the correct deployment CL. 3) Both 1 + 2. A registered serialization callback could decide to use a wrapper type, which would be deserialized and automatically unwrapped by the cache layer. View the original post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&p=4090357#... Reply to the post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=posting&mode=reply&a...