For passivation=false, key sentence in the doc is "Whenever an element is modified, added or removed, then that modification is persisted in the backend store via the cache loader." There's no direct relationship between eviction and cache loading. If you don't use eviction, what's in the persistent store is basically a copy of what's in memory. If you do use eviction, what's in the persistent store is basically a superset of what's in memory (includes nodes that have been evicted). For passivation=true, there is a direct relationship between eviction and the cache loader. Writes to the persistent store via the cache loader only occur as part of the eviction process. In this case, what's in memory and what's in the persistent store are two subsets of the total information set, with no intersection between the subsets. View the original post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&p=4077553#... Reply to the post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=posting&mode=reply&a...