That example worked. It turns out I forgot to start the pod. :) Anyway, I'm still having some issues since I want to use systemd to manage my containerized services on the host. My current strategy is to use a single service to manage the pod including the containers. I have the following service file: [Unit] Description=Test Wants=syslog.service [Service] Restart=always ExecStartPre=-/usr/bin/podman stop containerA containerB ExecStartPre=-/usr/bin/podman pod stop test ExecStartPre=-/usr/bin/podman rm containerA containerB ExecStartPre=-/usr/bin/podman pod rm test ExecStartPre=/usr/bin/podman pod create --name test ExecStartPre=/usr/bin/podman create --pod test --name containerA imageA ExecStartPre=/usr/bin/podman create --pod test --name containerB imageB ExecStart=/usr/bin/podman start test ExecStop=/usr/bin/podman stop test [Install] WantedBy=multi-user.target It works when I fire off the commands manually, but when I try to start the service it becomes dead and the pod gets status Exited, killing the two containers inside it. Again, when I run all the commands from the shell manually the pod comes up fine and runs without problems. Ideas?