Do I need to use EC2 with DynamoDB?

Question

I haven't been able to find the answer to this question in the Amazon DynamoDB documentation, so my apologies for asking such a basic question here:

Can I access DynamoDB from my own web server, or do I need to use an EC2 instance?

Other than the obvious higher latency, are there any security or performance considerations when using my own server?

Answer 1

You can use Amazon DynamoDB without restrictions from about everywhere - a nice and helpful demonstration are the AWS Toolkits for Eclipse and Visual Studio for example, which allow you to create tables, insert and edit data, initiate table scans, and more straight from your local development environment (see the introductory post AWS Toolkits for Eclipse and Visual Studio Now Support DynamoDB).

Other than the obvious higher latency, are there any security or performance considerations when using my own server?

Not really, other than facilitating SSL via the HTTPS endpoint, if your use case requires respective security.

In case you are not using it already, you should check out AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) as well, which is highly recommended to securely control access to AWS services and resources for your users (i.e. your web server here), rather than simply using your main AWS account credentials.

Depending on your server location, you might want to select an appropriate lower latency endpoint eventually - the currently available ones are listed in Regions and Endpoints, section Amazon DynamoDB.