diff --git a/hbase-client/src/main/java/org/apache/hadoop/hbase/ipc/NettyRpcClientConfigHelper.java b/hbase-client/src/main/java/org/apache/hadoop/hbase/ipc/NettyRpcClientConfigHelper.java
index a8c99378720..4a7bc66e324 100644
--- a/hbase-client/src/main/java/org/apache/hadoop/hbase/ipc/NettyRpcClientConfigHelper.java
+++ b/hbase-client/src/main/java/org/apache/hadoop/hbase/ipc/NettyRpcClientConfigHelper.java
@@ -23,7 +23,6 @@ import org.apache.commons.lang3.StringUtils;
 import org.apache.hadoop.conf.Configuration;
 import org.apache.hadoop.hbase.util.Pair;
 import org.apache.yetus.audience.InterfaceAudience;
-
 import org.apache.hbase.thirdparty.com.google.common.base.Preconditions;
 import org.apache.hbase.thirdparty.io.netty.channel.Channel;
 import org.apache.hbase.thirdparty.io.netty.channel.EventLoopGroup;
@@ -107,7 +106,10 @@ public final class NettyRpcClientConfigHelper {
   static Pair<EventLoopGroup, Class<? extends Channel>> getEventLoopConfig(Configuration conf) {
     String name = conf.get(EVENT_LOOP_CONFIG);
     if (name == null) {
-      return getDefaultEventLoopConfig(conf);
+      int threadCount = conf.getInt(HBASE_NETTY_EVENTLOOP_RPCCLIENT_THREADCOUNT_KEY, 0);
+      return new Pair<>(new NioEventLoopGroup(threadCount,
+        new DefaultThreadFactory("RPCClient-NioEventLoopGroup", true,
+          Thread.NORM_PRIORITY)), NioSocketChannel.class);
     }
     if (StringUtils.isBlank(name)) {
       return null;
diff --git a/pom.xml b/pom.xml
index 36e9557a0ec..0768ce22be6 100755
--- a/pom.xml
+++ b/pom.xml
@@ -584,8 +584,17 @@
             <testFailureIgnore>${surefire.testFailureIgnore}</testFailureIgnore>
             <forkedProcessTimeoutInSeconds>${surefire.timeout}</forkedProcessTimeoutInSeconds>
             <redirectTestOutputToFile>${test.output.tofile}</redirectTestOutputToFile>
+            <!-- These are incontext system properties set on mvn. For forked
+              jvms, see hbase-surefire.argLine... So, we might be dup'ing
+              configs here and over on what we pass to the forked jvm.
+            -->
             <systemPropertyVariables>
               <test.build.classes>${test.build.classes}</test.build.classes>
+              <!--And for eventloops that have no explicit configuration, netty sets
+                nioeventloopgroup thread count to CPU count * 2. Thats too much
+                for mini clusters/tests.
+              -->
+              <io.netty.eventLoopThreads>3</io.netty.eventLoopThreads>
             </systemPropertyVariables>
             <excludes>
               <!-- users can add -D option to skip particular test classes