There are at least 2 problems with DynamoDBLocal. Resolve both, and you will be running embedded DynamoDB. First, the -port parameter does not work correctly. So Jetty isn't setup on the port you expect. Instead something like port 51205 (or random?) is set as the Jetty listener as a default port. Here is my code for how I start the server avoiding the built-in command-line parsing which is better
![Amazon DynamoDB Local - unknown error, exception or failure](https://cdn-ak-scissors.b.st-hatena.com/image/square/98d6f053a97a87156775f60757c60865d0f2c47d/height=288;version=1;width=512/https%3A%2F%2Fcdn.sstatic.net%2FSites%2Fstackoverflow%2FImg%2Fapple-touch-icon%402.png%3Fv%3D73d79a89bded)