diff --git a/src/main/resources/default.ducc.properties b/src/main/resources/default.ducc.properties
index 932d7a5..8857a40 100644
--- a/src/main/resources/default.ducc.properties
+++ b/src/main/resources/default.ducc.properties
@@ -681,10 +681,11 @@
 # If a node becomes inoperative, the Resource Manager deallocates all processes on that 
 # node and attempts to reallocate them on other nodes. The node is marked offline and is 
 # unusable until its heartbeats start up again.          
-# The default configuration declares the agent heartbeats to occur at 1 minute intervals. 
-# Therefore heartbeats must be missed for five minutes before the Resource Manager takes 
+# The default configuration declares the agent heartbeats to occur at 30 second intervals.
+# (see ducc.agent.node.metrics.publish.rate) 
+# Therefore heartbeats must be missed for 3 minutes before the Resource Manager takes 
 # corrective action. 
-ducc.rm.node.stability = 5
+ducc.rm.node.stability = 6
 
 # Which policy to use when shrinking/evicting shares - alternatively, SHRINK_BY_MACHINE.
 # The eviction.policy is a heuristic to choose which processes of a job to preempt because of 
diff --git a/uima-ducc-sm/src/main/java/org/apache/uima/ducc/sm/ServiceSet.java b/uima-ducc-sm/src/main/java/org/apache/uima/ducc/sm/ServiceSet.java
index 61e2b06..a1eee31 100644
--- a/uima-ducc-sm/src/main/java/org/apache/uima/ducc/sm/ServiceSet.java
+++ b/uima-ducc-sm/src/main/java/org/apache/uima/ducc/sm/ServiceSet.java
@@ -1497,7 +1497,12 @@
                     logger.info(methodName, id, "Instance", inst_id, "stopped by SM.  Not restarting.");
                 } else {
                     // An instance stopped and we (SM) didn't ask it to - by definition this is failure no matter how it exits.
-                    
+ 
+                  // If the RM purges the instance on a node failure the service should not be penalized UIMA-6111
+                  if (jct == JobCompletionType.ResourcesUnavailable) {
+                    logger.info(methodName, id, "Instance purged by RM (node died?) - prior state[", old_state, 
+                            "] current state[", state, "] completion[", jct, "]");
+                  } else {
                     switch ( old_state ) {
                         case WaitingForServices:
                         case WaitingForResources:
@@ -1515,6 +1520,7 @@
                             logger.info(methodName, id, "Instance stopped unexpectedly: prior state[", old_state, " completion[", jct, "]");
                             break;
                     }
+                  }
 
                     if ( excessiveFailures() ) { 
                         String disable_reason = null;