The hotrod server currently keeps the default lifespan and maxIdle in the CacheDecodeContext. This works fine however a metadata is generated ignoring that if -1 is passed. Instead the put(K, V, Metadata) merges the default metadata into the one generated, which won't have a lifespan or maxIdle set since it was -1. In this case the merge method will take the default value instead. We should explicitly set the metadata to -1 before calling put(K, V, Metadata)