  We introduce a new family of erasure codes, called group decodable code
(GDC), for distributed storage system. Given a set of design parameters
{\alpha; \beta; k; t}, where k is the number of information symbols, each
codeword of an (\alpha; \beta; k; t)-group decodable code is a t-tuple of
strings, called buckets, such that each bucket is a string of \beta symbols
that is a codeword of a [\beta; \alpha] MDS code (which is encoded from \alpha
information symbols). Such codes have the following two properties: (P1)
Locally Repairable: Each code symbol has locality (\alpha; \beta-\alpha + 1).
(P2) Group decodable: From each bucket we can decode \alpha information
symbols. We establish an upper bound of the minimum distance of (\alpha; \beta;
k; t)-group decodable code for any given set of {\alpha; \beta; k; t}; We also
prove that the bound is achievable when the coding field F has size |F| > n-1
\choose k-1.
