Re: EPICS IOCs in Kubernetes — Community Experience?

[Andrea Michelotti via Tech-talk <tech-talk at aps.anl.gov>]

Hi, I'm on holiday right now so can't go into detail, but you should definitely talk to Giles Knap at Diamond Light Source (DLS) — he's been a pioneer in this space with the "epics-containers" project, and has likely already solved (or at least characterized) the Pod-IP/rediscovery problem you're describing for CA and PVA even if we use a slight different approach. Also worth pinging Claudio Bisegni at SLAC directly if you haven't already — He's working on k8s there and we are in touch.

On our side, we run what we call EPIK8S (EPICS on Kubernetes) successfully in production on four beamlines. Some info here if useful: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-0221/21/04/P04010

Happy to see you moving this way — we think it really makes things much easier. Will follow up with more detail when I'm back if useful.

Best,

Andrea Michelotti

--------------------
dr. Andrea Michelotti
Head of Control Systems Service

INFN - Laboratori Nazionali di Frascati
Accelerator Division,
Bldg.2, Room 120
Via Enrico Fermi, 40
00044 Frascati (RM)

e-mail:   andrea.michelotti at infn.it
office:   (+39) 06.9403.2272
mobile:   (+39) 06.9403.8203
fax   :   (+39) 06.9403.2256
Teams :   amichelo at infn.it
LinkedIn: http://it.linkedin.com/in/michelotti

Inviato da Outlook per Android

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Da: Tech-talk <tech-talk-bounces at aps.anl.gov> per conto di Williams, Ernest L., Jr via Tech-talk <tech-talk at aps.anl.gov>
Inviato: venerdì, agosto 28, 2026 8:34:13 AM
A: EPICS Tech Talk <tech-talk at aps.anl.gov>
Oggetto: EPICS IOCs in Kubernetes — Community Experience?

Hi all,

At SLAC, we have started working on integrating EPICS services and IOCs into Kubernetes, and would be interested to hear from others in the EPICS community who are already running EPICS successfully in Kubernetes.

Our current environment includes EPICS Base 7.0.9, Channel Access, EPICS Base PVAccess, PVXS 1.5.2. And p4p 4.2.2.   IOCs and other EPICS services run in Docker containers as Kubernetes Pods, with Kubernetes Services providing stable network endpoints. Our Kubernetes environment currently uses Cilium for the network layer.

One area I am currently investigating is IOC recovery when Pods are restarted or replaced, particularly how CA and PVA clients rediscover an IOC when its Pod IP changes while the Kubernetes Service remains stable. This has raised some interesting questions around the interaction between EPICS discovery and the Kubernetes network layer.

I would be very interested in hearing from anyone running EPICS IOCs or other EPICS services in Kubernetes:

• What Kubernetes networking architecture are you using (for example, Cilium, Calico, Flannel, or another CNI)?
• Are you running CA, PVA, p4p/Python PVA services, or some combination?
• How are you handling EPICS discovery within the cluster and between Kubernetes and external EPICS networks?
• How do your clients and IOCs behave during Pod replacement, rolling updates, rescheduling, or other events where the Pod IP changes?
• Are you using Kubernetes Services as stable endpoints for EPICS traffic?
• What EPICS/Kubernetes integration problems have you encountered and solved?

I am mainly looking to compare experiences and learn what patterns are working well elsewhere in the community.

Cheers,

Ernest Williams
Dept. Head, Controls Software Engineering
Instrumentation Division, Technology Innovation Directorate
SLAC National Laboratory, Stanford University