Kubernetes-Based Containerization Framework for SAP S/4HANA Workloads in Hybrid Cloud Environments
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.15662/IJEETR.2025.0706056Keywords:
Kubernetes, SAP S/4HANA, hybrid cloud, containerization, high availability, policy-driven deployment, workload portability, ERP modernisationAbstract
Enterprises running SAP S/4HANA face growing pressure to modernise mission-critical ERP landscapes without sacrificing the performance, resilience, and governance those landscapes demand. This paper proposes and evaluates a Kubernetes-based containerization framework for managing SAP S/4HANA and SAP-adjacent workloads across hybrid cloud environments spanning on-premises and public cloud infrastructure. The framework integrates container orchestration, automated scaling, service isolation, workload portability, and policy-driven deployment to improve operational flexibility while preserving the requirements of mission-critical ERP. It addresses core enterprise challenges—resource optimisation, high availability, disaster recovery, security, and consistent lifecycle management—by applying cloud-native orchestration principles to selected SAP-adjacent services and workload components rather than indiscriminately containerising the entire stack. Using a design-science methodology triangulating production-representative telemetry, a controlled before/after comparison against a traditional virtual-machine (VM) baseline, and a policy-compliance audit, the study quantifies resource utilisation, failover recovery time, deployment lead time, and workload portability across environments. Results indicate that orchestrated containerisation improved resource utilisation, compressed failover and deployment times, and enabled consistent, policy-governed deployment across hybrid targets, while service isolation contained fault blast radius. Contributions include a hybrid-cloud reference architecture for SAP containerisation, an empirical characterisation of the modernisation trade-offs, and transferable governance and lifecycle lessons for mission-critical ERP. Limitations include single-organisation, observational measurement and the deliberate scoping to SAP-adjacent components, which constrain generalisation to the certified database tier. The work advances practice by demonstrating that cloud-native orchestration can modernise ERP operations while respecting the strict performance and governance constraints of S/4HANA landscapes.
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