Yes, active-passive could also work with these low-prio threads working off different disjoint data sets on different "providers" simultaneously. The only problem here is maintaining integrity of the state when there are other threads updating the state at the same time - the state may be outdated. But then again, assuming updates are idempotent and that the joiner is queueing up updates while waiting for state, this shouldn't be a problem. The only drawback is that it may take a lot longer (significantly longer if the state provider thread is low-prio) for the joiner to get state, but that shouldn't be a problem in an active-passive scenario. I think providing pluggable policies/mechanisms for state transfer may be a good thing as well, since a "one size fits all" solution for ST almost certainly won't work. Just means cleaner abstraction between state transfer and normal cache operations, but a lot of forethought into what ST may involve when designing an SPI for this. View the original post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&p=4113026#... Reply to the post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=posting&mode=reply&a...