Ok, I have tried some more variations. When I remove the jboss.xml and put the @Clustered annotation on the SLSB and use jndi.properties java.naming.factory.initial=org.jnp.interfaces.NamingContextFactory | java.naming.factory.url.pkgs=org.jboss.naming:org.jnp.interfaces | java.naming.provider.url=localhost:1100 it works nicely. However when I remove the @Clustered annotation and put jboss.xml back into META-INF I get a javax.naming.NotContextException | at org.jnp.server.NamingServer.lookup(NamingServer.java:285) | at org.jboss.ha.jndi.TreeHead.lookupLocally(TreeHead.java:296) | at org.jboss.ha.jndi.TreeHead.lookup(TreeHead.java:215) | at org.jboss.ha.jndi.HAJNDI.lookup(HAJNDI.java:155) | ... So the jboss.xml must be faulty, however my XMLParser validates it and the Bean is definitely bound in the Global JNDI namespace. What does that NotContextException mean? Or can anybody point out how to use a correct deployment descriptor for clustering. The examples in the clustering guid or the JB336 course do not look differently. View the original post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&p=4130104#... Reply to the post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=posting&mode=reply&a...