Zookeeper is a distributed coordination service that provides naming, configuration, synchronization, and group services. It allows distributed processes to coordinate with each other through a shared hierarchical namespace of data registers called znodes. Zookeeper follows a leader-elected consensus protocol to guarantee atomic broadcast of state updates from the leader to followers. It uses a hierarchical namespace of znodes similar to a file system to store configuration data and other application-defined metadata. Zookeeper provides services like leader election, group membership, synchronization, and configuration management that are essential for distributed systems.