EPIK8S: a kubernetes-based framework for scalable EPICS control system deployment in accelerator facilities

Abstract Modern particle accelerator facilities require sophisticated control systems capable of managing thousands of process variables in real-time while ensuring high availability, scalability, and ease of maintenance. This paper presents EPIK8S (EPICS on Kubernetes), a framework that leverages Kubernetes container orchestration to deploy, manage, and scale EPICS (Experimental Physics and Industrial Control System) infrastructure for accelerator control systems. A central design principle is that the entire control system configuration for a beamline — comprising IOCs, services, and infrastructure — is captured in a single YAML file, which is processed through a Jinja2 templating layer to produce device-specific IBEK runtime configurations. This three-tier architecture radically simplifies IOC management, enables complete change tracking via Git, and eliminates an entire class of manual configuration errors. The framework introduces a GitOps-based approach using ArgoCD for continuous deployment, providing declarative configuration management and automated synchronisation. We describe the architecture and implementation, and report operational experience from three INFN facilities: the SPARC_LAB photoinjector, the DAFNE Beam Test Facility (BTF), and the ELI-NP gamma beam system in Romania. Performance metrics — including dedicated Channel Access round-trip latency measurements comparing bare-metal, pod-to-pod, and external-to-cluster scenarios — and lessons learned from over two years of production operation demonstrate significant improvements in deployment efficiency, maintainability, and reliability compared to traditional bare-metal EPICS deployments, with containerisation overhead well within acceptable bounds for accelerator control applications.