Allow custom pod labels and annotations for Maximo Manage server bundle pods through ManageWorkspace podTemplates

We need custom Kubernetes labels on Maximo Manage server bundle pods (all, ui, cron, mea, report). Our log monitoring stack (Grafana) uses pod labels to discover, route and filter logs. MAS 9.1.0 doesn't let us set or keep custom labels on these pods.

Current behaviour

• ManageWorkspace doesn't have a field for setting arbitrary metadata.labels on server bundle pods.
• The supported podTemplates settings cover replicas, resources, affinity/anti-affinity, tolerations, node selectors, security contexts, host aliases and topology spread constraints. Labels aren't included.
• If we add labels to the CR or the pods by hand, the MAS operator removes them when it reconciles or recreates the pods. This means there's currently no supported way to keep them.

IBM Support confirmed this under case TS023231854 and suggested we raise an RFE.

Requested enhancement

1. Add a supported way to set custom pod labels (and ideally annotations) for each Manage server bundle in the ManageWorkspace CR. This could be a new podTemplates attribute or a field under the server bundle settings. For example:

podTemplates:
  - name: <server-bundle-name>
    metadata:
      labels:
        app.company/team: plant-maintenance
        logging/enabled: "true"
      annotations:
        example.io/scrape: "true"

1. The operator should pass these labels to the Deployment pod template and keep them during reconciliation, upgrades and pod restarts.
2. Ideally, offer the same capability for other MAS-managed pods for consistency.

Business value

• Lets standard observability tools (Grafana, Loki, Prometheus and similar) work with MAS without manual workarounds that keep breaking.
• Supports common enterprise labelling standards for cost allocation, ownership, compliance and network policies.
• Reduces support effort and the risk of losing monitoring after an operator reconciles the pods.