On https://docs.jboss.org/author/display/ISPN/Clustered+Configuration+QuickStart it states that "Infinispan expects jgroups.xml to either be on your classpath or for it to be an absolute path name.". I suggest it should be written like so; "Infinispan then looks for jgroups.xml first in classpath, and then for an absolute path name if not found in classpath."