My apologies. I've had that "just update workers.properties" idea in my head for a long time, don't know where it came from, but it's just wrong. A couple suggestions for you: 1) If you are using JBoss 5, try mod_cluster http://www.jboss.org/mod_cluster/ One of the primary motivations for its creation was the dynamic registration / unregistration of backend nodes as they come and go. 2) Restart httpd gracefully apache -k graceful See "Graceful Restart" section of http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/stopping.html for more on what that does. View the original post : http://www.jboss.org/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&p=4236813#... Reply to the post : http://www.jboss.org/index.html?module=bb&op=posting&mode=reply&a...