Operational Experience From a Large EPICS Based Accelreator Facility

Daniel J. Ciarlette and Rodney Gerig
Advanced Photon Source
Argonne National Laboratory

The Advanced Photon Source (APS) at Argonne National Laboratory is a third generation x-ray light source which uses the Experiment Physics and Industrial Control System (EPICS) to operate it's linear accelerator, positron accumulator ring, booster synchrotron, and storage ring equipment. EPICS has been used at the APS since the beginning of installation and commissioning. Currently, EPICS controls approximately xx BME crates with xx,xxx process variables. With this complexity, the APS has had to review some of the methods originally employed and change with needs. In addition, due to commisioning and operational needs, higher level operator software needed to be created. EPICS has been a flexible enough to allow this.

Description of the APS
Description of the IOCs, # of PVs,...
Engineering -vs- operational screens
IOC reboots and restoring parameters
SDDS based tools used
Channel Access Security
Finding out what is running where
Backup and Restore being enhanced to Save, Compare, and Restore