What do you mean by "*deploying*"? Creating it and starting it? Lets say I won't do that from an EJB, that's not the issue. It won't be standalone, it is intended to "live" inside our application. What do you mean by packaged with the ejb jars? The cache implementation is provided by u guys, it's in the server's lib directory. I use it inside my application, which is an ear that includes a bunch of ejb jars and wars. Even if I don't deploy the cache from within an ejb (assuming "deploy"="create and start"), when I manipulate it from within an ejb the cache has to replicate itself, thus creating/dispatching a call to another thread (if working with async replication), or issue network io calls from the containers thread (if working with sync replication). View the original post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&p=3987953#... Reply to the post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=posting&mode=reply&a...