RADOS Gateway

RGW provides a RESTful S3 and Swift compatible object storage interface built directly on top of the Ceph RADOS cluster.

RGW transforms a Ceph cluster into a robust object storage platform by providing an HTTP REST interface. It supports the Amazon S3 and OpenStack Swift APIs (including features like multi-part uploads and versioning) to ensure compatibility with existing cloud applications. Operators deploy RGW using the Beast frontend for high-performance asynchronous I/O. The gateway manages multi-site replication across distinct zones to provide disaster recovery and global data distribution. Integration with LDAP or OpenStack Keystone handles identity management while bucket policies control granular access. This layer abstracts the underlying RADOS complexity: turning raw OSD (Object Storage Device) capacity into scalable storage for backups, media assets, and massive data lakes.

https://docs.ceph.com/en/latest/radosgw/