For fast start you can use Vagrant. vagrant up
will make etcd build and running on virtual machine. Required Vagrant version is 1.5.0.
Next lets set a single key and then retrieve it:
curl -L http://127.0.0.1:4001/v2/keys/mykey -XPUT -d value="this is awesome"
curl -L http://127.0.0.1:4001/v2/keys/mykey