- Promoted CRI communication of the cgroup driver mechanism to beta. The `KubeletCgroupDriverFromCRI` feature gate is now in beta and enabled by default. This allows the kubelet to query the container runtime using CRI to determine the mechanism for cgroup management. If the container runtime doesn't support this, the kubelet falls back to using the configuration file (you can also use the deprecated `--cgroup-driver` command line argument). ([#125828](https...

* `kubeadm join` is now blocking on the kubelet performing the TLS Bootstrap properly. Earlier, `kubeadm join` only did the discovery part and exited successfully without checking that the kubelet actually started properly and performed the TLS bootstrap correctly. Now, as kubeadm runs some post-join steps (for example, annotating the Node API object with the CRISocket), `kubeadm join` is now waiting for the kubelet to perform the TLS Bootstrap, and then uses that credential to perform...

images must be moved to the new directory, and installation processes must be updated with the new path. ([#58171](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/58171), [@verult](https://github.com/verult))

* Default values differ between the Kubelet's componentconfig (config file) API and the Kubelet's command line. Be sure to review the default values when migrating to using a config file. For example, the authz mode is set to "AlwaysAllow" if you rely on the command line, but defaults...

e2e tests that require SSH may now be used against clusters that have nodes without external IP addresses by setting the environment variable `KUBE_SSH_BASTION` to the `host:port` of a machine that is allowed to SSH to those nodes.  The same private key that the test would use is used for the bastion host.  The test connects to the bastion and then tunnels another SSH connection to the node. ([#72286](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/72286), [@smarterclayton](https://github.com/smarterclayton))...

  - The `PersistentVolumeLabel` admission controller will be removed in a future release, when the out-of-tree versions of the GCE and AWS cloud providers move to GA. The cloud providers are marked alpha in version 1.9.

### OpenStack

- OIDC authentication will now fail if the username asserted based on a CEL expression config is the empty string.  Previously the request would be authenticated with the username set to the empty string. ([#123568](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/123568), [@enj](https://github.com/enj))

### Apps

The core workloads API, which is composed of the DaemonSet, Deployment, ReplicaSet, and StatefulSet kinds, has been promoted to GA stability in the apps/v1 group version. As such, the apps/v1beta2 group version is deprecated, and all new code should use the kinds in the apps/v1 group version.

### Auth

* The kube-apiserver discovery APIs (for example, `/apis`) return information about the API groups being served, and can change dynamically.
During server startup, prior to the server reporting healthy (via `/healthz`), not all API groups may be reported.
Wait for the server to report healthy (via `/healthz`) before depending on the information provided by the discovery APIs.

### SIG Multicluster

- Kubeadm: allow the "certs check-expiration" command to not require the existence of the cluster CA key (ca.key file) when checking the expiration of managed certificates in kubeconfig files. ([#106929](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/106929), [@neolit123](https://github.com/neolit123)) [SIG Cluster Lifecycle]