Is Amahi right for me?

[glenb83]

Hi All,

I have recently found this software in my search for an alternative to Freenas (which I currently run) and wanted to ask a few questions before I take the plunge to make sure it is right for me!

So a little background on my Freenas experience first - I am running a HP Microserver with Freenas, and for the most part I have been happy with Freenas, but I am often having 'permissions' issues when I try to delete a file from my freenas box, or with files copied from my Freenas box to my Windows 7 desktop appearing with a lock and being unable to open. The other thing I never really got to work correctly was the plugins jail and using the DLNA streaming (I could see the server and files, but not play them on any device).

Onto my questions:
1. I currently have my Freenas files setup as a mapped network drive in Windows on my main desktop, and also on my HTPC running Mediaportal. This appears to be the easiest way fro Mediaportal to find and stream my files. Will Amahi be setup in a similar way to access my files? I don't want to have the same permissions issues I had with Freenas, the majority of access is done through Windows clients and a couple of Android phones/tablets.
2. I currently have 4x 2TB drives setup in a ZFS array giving me 5.2TB available storage with redundancy. I am running Freenas off a USB stick. Will I be able to run Amahi off removable storage like I currently do, or is there performance issues doing that? The other alternative I was hoping for was if I was able to implement the Amahi/Ubuntu install into the 4x drives as a greyhole storage pool, or do I need a 5th drive to run the OS?
3. What sort of performance can I expect accessing the Amahi files across a network kcompared to Freenas? I have listed my HP Microserver specs below to evaluate. At it's best I can write to Freenas between around 90MB/s to 100MB/s, and at it's worse around 10MB/s-30MB/s.

(System specs)
HP Proliant Microserver
AMD Athlon(tm) II Neo N36L Dual-Core Processor 1.30GHz
8GB RAM
4x 2TB Samsung HD204UI hard drives

Thanks in advance for any advice!

[cpg]

1) yes, similar setup with samba (plus DLNA, Videos5 (ipad, etc.) if you want).
2) yes, but not ZFS
3) performance is usually tops, but it's hard to tell or compare with others. greyhole (drive pooling) workd via samba, and it's postponed work, so it may not be a direct hit, but still, perf is hardly ever a problem with amahi. i have a network with sh!tty cabling and i can easily stream 2 HD streams simultaneously, multiple clients, internet traffic, dns, etc. etc. etc.