Sorry for the slow response re: your eviction questions. The thing with the expiration policy is that it needs the expiration keys to consider nodes for removal - which includes your "structural" nodes like /root/a/b/c. Now if a node is considered for eviction and the node has children (e.g., /root/a/b is considered for eviction) it will not be removed, but instead it will be "emptied" of any data it may possess, freeing up memory. View the original post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&p=4164451#... Reply to the post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=posting&mode=reply&a...