If a cache is configured with eviction and expiration max-idle, correct with a store (passivation=false) to keep the evicted entries, the cache size and entries comming down to the eviction limit after max-idle is reached.

Note this will happen no matter whether a get() or getWithMetadata() is used.

Configuration is like below.

~~~
<distributed-cache name="ExpirationCache" owners="2" mode="ASYNC" remote-timeout="25000" start="EAGER">
<locking isolation="READ_COMMITTED" striping="false" acquire-timeout="20000" concurrency-level="1000"/>
<transaction mode="NONE"/>
<memory>
<object size="5"/>
</memory>
<expiration max-idle="20000" lifespan="100000"/>
<persistence passivation="false">
<file-store max-entries="1000000" relative-to="jboss.server.data.dir" path="api-general-filestore" name="api-general-filestore" shared="false" preload="false" fetch-state="true" purge="true"/>
</persistence>
</distributed-cache>
~~~