All eviction logic, queues and timers are local to a single cache instance and is not shared across a cluster. Marking a node as in use, also, only affects a single cache instance. Since you have your own eviction policy that actually does a remove instead of an evict, that's where you may have a problem. Perhaps using your own RPC call across a cluster to have all caches call markNodeCurrentlyInUse()? Why do you need a custom eviction policy that does a remove anyway, why not just a standard eviction policy? If you don't use a cache loader it has almost the same effect as a remove, and won't affect the entire cluster. Oh and FYI this API call is available in 1.4.X - you just need to get a hold of the TreeCache, not just the TreeCacheMBean, and call getEvictionRegionManager(). View the original post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&p=4144094#... Reply to the post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=posting&mode=reply&a...