There's probably some value in having a Memcached-talking CacheLoader as well, and fairly trivial to write. It might be good for testing the server, at least. One interesting thing that memcached does is allow for the specification of an eviction time per key. As a emulating server, I suppose that my ExpirationPolicy might come into play. Not sure consistent hashing really fits in with the Data Partitioning design since it seems to concern itself with load/data balancing and reliability. But I sense that data balancing is possible with consistent hashing. For instance, when a node joins or leaves, each existing instance would examine their tree and "move" any data rehashed for the new/existing member to that instance. And some measure of reliability certainly is possible with consistent hashing: Hash an Fqn to two nodes and store two copies. View the original post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&p=4177289#... Reply to the post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=posting&mode=reply&a...