The German National Analysis Facility as a tool for ATLAS analyses

In 2008 the German National Analysis Facility (NAF) at DESY was established. It is attached to and builds on top of the DESY Grid infrastructure. The facility was designed to provide the best possible analysis infrastructure for high energy particle physics of the ATLAS, CMS, LHCb and ILC experiments. The Grid and local infrastructure of the German NAF will be reviewed with a focus on the ATLAS part. Both parts include large scale storage and a batch system. The main emphasis of this presentation is the ATLAS specific customisation and utilisation of the NAF. This refers not only to the NAF components but also to the different components of the ATLAS analysis framework. Experience from operating and supporting ATLAS users on the German NAF will be presented. The ATLAS usage of the different components will be shown including some typical use cases of user analysis. Finally, the question will be addressed if the design of the NAF meets the ATLAS expectations for efficient data analysis in the era of LHC data taking.