Memcachedb (db) is a distributed key-value storage system designed for persistence
code.google.com
code.google.com
This new cousin would be ideal for me. Is anyone else considering it? I need a flexible object database. I've looked at CouchDB or something based off of qdbm (http://qdbm.sourceforge.net). Currently working on other parts of the system (and delaying the persistence part).
As for alternatives, have a look at thrudb. It's new too but is being used in production by a few decent sized sites.