The limitation implied in the statement is based on 2 things: 1) We don't acquire distributed locks as methods are invoked. So, node1 may broadcast a prepare on /a/b/c and node2 may do so as well at the same time. Both txs on both nodes will fail as both prepares will fail. 2) The other limitation is that even after broadcasting a successful prepare and then following up with a successful commit, if for some reason the commit does not reach a network node (e.g., partial network failure) but reaches other nodes, there is no way to recover consistently from this. If you use SyncCommitPhase = true in your configuration, at least the originating node will throw an exception if everyone in the cluster does not respond with an ack after successful commit. Depending on your app, you can handle recovery manually at this stage. View the original post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&p=4050161#... Reply to the post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=posting&mode=reply&a...