Thanks for the welcome :-) Apologies for the late reply, I didn't have my group settings to send me replies so I thought not one got back! Sorry.
Anyway, I've been using voldemort in non-embedded mode locally for development so far, and it worked out alright except one really odd issue... In my app as voldemort is not packaged into released binaries and its just a huge lib directory, I didn't know what jars i needed for just the client and what I could ditch, so I just included them all to start with. This resulted in a very odd occurrence where when trying to exit the app would stall and had a blocked thread. I fired up YourKit to take a closer look and could see that there was a really strange thing occurring where a thread was not exiting... anyway, long story short, this only occurs when jna.jar was on the classpath. This is my classpath *without* the jna.jar:
google-collect-1.0.jar
jdom-1.1.jar
log4j-over-slf4j-1.6.6.jar
slf4j-api-1.6.6.jar
voldemort-0.96.jar
xercesImpl-2.9.1.jar
scala-library.jar
org.clapper/grizzled-slf4j_2.9.2/jars/grizzled-slf4j_2.9.2-0.6.9.jar
org.slf4j/slf4j-api/jars/slf4j-api-1.6.4.jar
ch.qos.logback/logback-classic/jars/logback-classic-1.0.0.jar
ch.qos.logback/logback-core/jars/logback-core-1.0.0.jar
com.twitter/ostrich/jars/ostrich-8.2.1.jar
com.twitter/scala-json/jars/scala-json-3.0.0.jar
com.twitter/util-core/jars/util-core-5.3.1.jar
com.twitter/util-eval/jars/util-eval-5.3.1.jar
scala-compiler.jar
com.twitter/util-logging/jars/util-logging-5.3.1.jar
com.twitter/util-jvm/jars/util-jvm-5.3.1.jar
com.typesafe.akka/akka-actor/jars/akka-actor-2.0.3.jar
com.typesafe/config/bundles/config-0.3.1.jar
com.typesafe.akka/akka-slf4j/jars/akka-slf4j-2.0.3.jar
net.databinder.dispatch/core_2.9.2/jars/core_2.9.2-0.9.1.jar
com.ning/async-http-client/jars/async-http-client-1.7.5.jar
com.typesafe.akka/akka-agent/jars/akka-agent-2.0.3.jar
org.scala-tools/scala-stm_2.9.1/jars/scala-stm_2.9.1-0.5.jar
com.typesafe.akka/akka-remote/jars/akka-remote-2.0.3.jar
io.netty/netty/bundles/netty-3.5.3.Final.jar
com.google.protobuf/protobuf-java/jars/protobuf-java-2.4.1.jar
net.debasishg/sjson_2.9.1/jars/sjson_2.9.1-0.15.jar
net.databinder/dispatch-json_2.9.1/jars/dispatch-json_2.9.1-0.8.5.jar
org.apache.httpcomponents/httpclient/jars/httpclient-4.1.jar
org.apache.httpcomponents/httpcore/jars/httpcore-4.1.jar
commons-logging/commons-logging/jars/commons-logging-1.1.1.jar
commons-codec/commons-codec/jars/commons-codec-1.4.jar
org.objenesis/objenesis/jars/objenesis-1.2.jar
commons-io/commons-io/jars/commons-io-1.4.jar
voldemort.store.compress/h2-lzf/jars/h2-lzf-1.0.jar
cc.spray/spray-can/1.0-M3-SNAPSHOT/jars/spray-can.jar
cc.spray/spray-io/1.0-M3-SNAPSHOT/jars/spray-io.jar
cc.spray/spray-util/1.0-M3-SNAPSHOT/jars/spray-util.jar
cc.spray/spray-http/1.0-M3-SNAPSHOT/jars/spray-http.jar
org.parboiled/parboiled-scala/jars/parboiled-scala-1.0.2.jar
org.parboiled/parboiled-core/jars/parboiled-core-1.0.2.jar
cc.spray/spray-routing/1.0-M3-SNAPSHOT/jars/spray-routing.jar
cc.spray/spray-httpx/1.0-M3-SNAPSHOT/jars/spray-httpx.jar
org.jvnet.mimepull/mimepull/jars/mimepull-1.8.jar
com.chuusai/shapeless_2.9.2/jars/shapeless_2.9.2-1.2.2.jar
net.liftweb/lift-json_2.9.2/jars/lift-json_2.9.2-2.5-M1.jar
org.scala-lang/scalap/jars/scalap-2.9.2.jar
com.thoughtworks.paranamer/paranamer/jars/paranamer-2.4.1.jar
However, i'd still like to embed it, but im not sure what dependencies I need for that? How far away is maven'izing the project? Manual dependency management is a frustration :-(