The HGF [4] Alliance Physics at the Terascale [2] started 2007 while the second phase of the German grid initiative D-Grid [3] was launched 2008. One of the computing goals of the HGF Alliance is to develop and to deploy grid-based mass storage systems (3 FTE have been pledged for this activity), while the D-Grid initiative has its own competence center of which 1/2 FTE has been assinged to dCache. Soon it became apparent that their most important common goal, supporting dCache administrators in Germany, could be achieved best when working together. Their collaboration is called German Storage Support Group.

At a first workshop in early 2008, different support strategies were discussed. As GGUS is the most important user support interface in EGEE and WLCG, it was obvious to provide via this interface. Together with a few experts from WLCG, the 2nd level service support dCache Experts was formed.

All members of the support group being storage administrators themselves, they were aware of a general reluctance of admins to discuss their problems openly. This led to the main line of their support: pro-active support. Training events are held twice per year. The annual spring workshop focuses on the latest dCache features and advanced dCache topics, while the training event at GridKa School (the annual grid summer school at KIT) puts emphasis on installation and basic administration topics.

The next workshop will take place in Wuppertal on April 13th and 14th. It will focus on performance optimization, but will also cover the topics of cost calculation, hot replication, info provider, check sum module and transfer parameters. The workshop is open to all dCache administrators (not only from Germany!). Further information and a registration form can be found at [1]