Thanks for the input! I prefer to keep my dev environment somewhere in the cloud. My only laptop is a work machine. So I don't feel comfy installing a lot of things on there that could interfere with my work. Free tier providers that offer hosted DB solutions may be one way to go.
But for now I'm still trying to get this working on my t2.micro.
[root@web1:~] #mongod
mongod --help for help and startup options
2014-10-26T10:39:01.603-0400 [initandlisten] MongoDB starting : pid=14052 port=27017 dbpath=/data/db 64-bit host=web1
2014-10-26T10:39:01.603-0400 [initandlisten] db version v2.6.5
2014-10-26T10:39:01.603-0400 [initandlisten] git version: e99d4fcb4279c0279796f237aa92fe3b64560bf6
2014-10-26T10:39:01.603-0400 [initandlisten] build info: Linux
build8.nj1.10gen.cc 2.6.32-431.3.1.el6.x86_64 #1 SMP Fri Jan 3 21:39:27 UTC 2014 x86_64 BOOST_LIB_VERSION=1_49
2014-10-26T10:39:01.603-0400 [initandlisten] allocator: tcmalloc
2014-10-26T10:39:01.603-0400 [initandlisten] options: {}
2014-10-26T10:39:01.605-0400 [initandlisten] journal dir=/data/db/journal
2014-10-26T10:39:01.606-0400 [initandlisten] recover : no journal files present, no recovery needed
2014-10-26T10:39:01.606-0400 [initandlisten]
2014-10-26T10:39:01.606-0400 [initandlisten] ERROR: Insufficient free space for journal files
2014-10-26T10:39:01.606-0400 [initandlisten] Please make at least 3379MB available in /data/db/journal or use --smallfiles
2014-10-26T10:39:01.606-0400 [initandlisten]
2014-10-26T10:39:01.606-0400 [initandlisten] exception in initAndListen: 15926 Insufficient free space for journals, terminating
2014-10-26T10:39:01.606-0400 [initandlisten] dbexit:
2014-10-26T10:39:01.606-0400 [initandlisten] shutdown: going to close listening sockets...
2014-10-26T10:39:01.606-0400 [initandlisten] shutdown: going to flush diaglog...
2014-10-26T10:39:01.606-0400 [initandlisten] shutdown: going to close sockets...
2014-10-26T10:39:01.606-0400 [initandlisten] shutdown: waiting for fs preallocator...
2014-10-26T10:39:01.606-0400 [initandlisten] shutdown: lock for final commit...
2014-10-26T10:39:01.606-0400 [initandlisten] shutdown: final commit...
2014-10-26T10:39:01.606-0400 [initandlisten] shutdown: closing all files...
2014-10-26T10:39:01.606-0400 [initandlisten] closeAllFiles() finished
2014-10-26T10:39:01.606-0400 [initandlisten] journalCleanup...
2014-10-26T10:39:01.606-0400 [initandlisten] removeJournalFiles
2014-10-26T10:39:01.606-0400 [initandlisten] shutdown: removing fs lock...
2014-10-26T10:39:01.606-0400 [initandlisten] dbexit: really exiting now
Starting mongod (via systemctl): Warning: Unit file of mongod.service changed on disk, 'systemctl daemon-reload' recommended.