The reason why it does not work is that you forgot to add the attribute start="true" to the broker declaration. When the AMQConnectionFactory tries to connect to the broker it does not find it (since you have not started it yet) and than creates and start a new one using default values. The new broker will create the directory activemq-data/localhost which will be the one actually used by your application :) Maybe it would be better to make the AMQConnectionFactory throwing an Exception if it does not find the broker at the url specified -- View this message in context: http://old.nabble.com/tmp_storage-created-even-with-presistence-turned-on--%28ActiveMQ-5.0%29-tp16193933p26608566.html Sent from the ActiveMQ - User mailing list archive at Nabble.com.