-ds.xml files are deployed before the EAR . The -ds.xml file basically gets converted to the xml services during XSLSubDeployer , these converted services are deployed before the EAR . Check this http://wiki.jboss.org/wiki/Wiki.jsp?page=DeploymentScanner The ordering of suffixes is: "sar", "service.xml", "rar", "jar", "war", "wsr", "ear", "zip" Can you make the -ds.xml file dependent on the EAR , this looks to me the dependency issue ? I need to see the entire server.log file to verify this . You can verify this from the server.log , you might notice that the EAR might be getting deployed after you see this error . Before making -ds.xml dependent on EAR you can do simple test , you can try this 1) Start JBoss Server 2) After it is started , deploy the EAR which contains your RAR . 3) After the EAR is deployed you deploy the -ds.xml , this should work as the dependent EAR is already available . If you still don't get it working send the -ds.xml+EAR at my email address . View the original post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&p=4127509#... Reply to the post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=posting&mode=reply&a...