Data produced by a Ceph client is stored in objects. In fact, even most of the associated metadata that Ceph stores for client-generated payload data is also stored either as separate Ceph Objects or within existing objects alongside payload data. Each object is identified by a unique name. Once a name is assigned to a newly created object, no other objects can be created with that exact name in the same namespace within a cluster.

Objects in Ceph are called Reliable, Autonomic, Distributed Object Store (RADOS) objects, and operations on them can be performed by using the rados command line tool. It facilitates a balanced distribution of data and workloads across a heterogeneous cluster that can grow or shrink in capacity dynamically. It provides all its client applications (including RBD and RGW) the illusion of a single logical object store with safe semantics and strong consistency guarantees.