One thing to keep in mind with LevelDB is that it has been created with web browsers and mobile devices as the main use case, NOT as a high-performance data store. If the features of LevelDB appeal to you, however, you may want to check out Basho's fork of it that they have tuned for use in a server environment: https://github.com/basho/leveldb . If this is interesting to you, check out Matthew Von-Maszewsky's recent talk at the Ricon East conference about his work tuning it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vo88IdglU_8