This is where placing markers (both "marked for eviction" as well as "mark as in use") on the node could help. The eviction interceptor places events in the queue as well as marks the node for eviction; on subsequent gets (before the eviction happens) the eviction interceptor could *remove* the "marked for eviction" marker (according to policy) on the node. When the eviction thread kicks in, it processes the eviction queue and before attempting to evict a node, tests the "marked for eviction" flag on the node as well as the "mark as in use" flag. Since these flags reside in the node, dealing with concurrency and race conditions become much easier. View the original post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&p=4003487#... Reply to the post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=posting&mode=reply&a...