Preload specifies which Fqns to preload from a cache loader, regardless of whether you are refereing to a ClusteredCacheLoader or a local persistence engine such as a JDBCCacheLoader. Also, preload allows you to be more fine-grained with what is preloaded, e.g., | <preload>/catalog, /users, /countryCodes</preload> | fetchPersistentState, on the other hand, is a flag that is only used with fetchImMemoryState. If the latter is true and you are retrieving all the state from a neighbouring cache in startup, state in any cache loader marked with fetchPersistentState set to true will be retrieved as well. So, it's not mutually exclusive, and in fact pertains to different functions altogether. Hope this makes sense... View the original post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&p=4136636#... Reply to the post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=posting&mode=reply&a...