diff --git a/jetty-gcloud/jetty-gcloud-memcached-session-manager/src/main/config/etc/gcloud-memcached-session-context.xml b/jetty-gcloud/jetty-gcloud-memcached-session-manager/src/main/config/etc/gcloud-memcached-session-context.xml
index 04a9cfcf4e1..b35daa8bd23 100644
--- a/jetty-gcloud/jetty-gcloud-memcached-session-manager/src/main/config/etc/gcloud-memcached-session-context.xml
+++ b/jetty-gcloud/jetty-gcloud-memcached-session-manager/src/main/config/etc/gcloud-memcached-session-context.xml
@@ -17,6 +17,12 @@
             <Ref id="idMgr"/>
           </Set>
           <Set name="scavengeIntervalSec">600</Set>
+          <!-- uncomment and configure the secs before a memcache entry is evicted
+          <Set name="expirySec">86400</Set>
+           -->
+           <!-- uncomment and configure whether memcached does heartbeats or not
+           <Set name="heartbeats">false</Set>
+            -->
           <Set name="host"><Env name="MEMCACHE_PORT_11211_TCP_ADDR" default="localhost"/></Set>
           <Set name="port"><Env name="MEMCACHE_PORT_11211_TCP_PORT" default="11211"/></Set>
         </New>
diff --git a/jetty-gcloud/jetty-gcloud-memcached-session-manager/src/main/java/org/eclipse/jetty/gcloud/memcached/session/GCloudMemcachedSessionManager.java b/jetty-gcloud/jetty-gcloud-memcached-session-manager/src/main/java/org/eclipse/jetty/gcloud/memcached/session/GCloudMemcachedSessionManager.java
index 5d97e599466..094c33c4533 100644
--- a/jetty-gcloud/jetty-gcloud-memcached-session-manager/src/main/java/org/eclipse/jetty/gcloud/memcached/session/GCloudMemcachedSessionManager.java
+++ b/jetty-gcloud/jetty-gcloud-memcached-session-manager/src/main/java/org/eclipse/jetty/gcloud/memcached/session/GCloudMemcachedSessionManager.java
@@ -52,6 +52,7 @@ public class GCloudMemcachedSessionManager extends GCloudSessionManager
     protected String _port;
     protected MemcachedClient _client;
     protected int _expirySec = 0;
+    private boolean _heartbeats = true;
 
     
 
@@ -210,6 +211,15 @@ public class GCloudMemcachedSessionManager extends GCloudSessionManager
     {
         _expirySec = expirySec;
     }
+    
+    
+    /**
+     * @param heartbeats if true memcached heartbeats are enabled. Default is true.
+     */
+    public void setHeartbeats (boolean heartbeats)
+    {
+        _heartbeats  = heartbeats;
+    }
 
     
     @Override
@@ -222,6 +232,8 @@ public class GCloudMemcachedSessionManager extends GCloudSessionManager
         
         XMemcachedClientBuilder builder = new XMemcachedClientBuilder(_host+":"+_port);
         _client = builder.build();
+        _client.setEnableHeartBeat(_heartbeats);
+        
 
         _client.setTranscoder(new ContextClassloaderSerializingTranscoder());
         super.doStart();