There is lot of support for serializing the objects before storing in the cache starting from the Infinispan v 5.0.  This is really helpful while we are planing to store objects which are by default not zerialized. 

But from the documentation it looks like Externalizers are supported only with EmbdeddCache mode and not with any client-server mode of deployment especially Hot Rod.

In case of a client-server mode, the client would be sending the objects on the wire using some serialization mode. So can you please elaborate on what is the method of serialization used here.

Also, we are having a deployment model where the cache runs as EmbeddedCache on an independent server and the cache client is hosted on a separate server. There is a wrapper componet on the cache server which actually talks to the cache in EmbeddedMode and this wrapper is exposed EJB to the the cache client.  Though exteralization can be used within the cache server, how do we serialize the non serialzed objects for the marshalling/unmarshalling between the cache client and the cache server.