### Feature

- Added 3 new metrics for monitoring async API calls in the scheduler when the `SchedulerAsyncAPICalls` feature gate was enabled:
    - `scheduler_async_api_call_execution_total`: tracks executed API calls by call type and result (success/error)

- Azure VMSS LoadBalancerBackendAddressPools updating has been improved with sequential-sync + concurrent-async requests. ([#88699](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/88699), [@feiskyer](https://github.com/feiskyer)) [SIG Cloud Provider]

- RateLimiter add a context-aware method, fix client-go request goruntine backlog in async timeout scene. ([#79375](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/79375), [@answer1991](https://github.com/answer1991))

    * faster handoff when a leader-elected process is gracefully terminated.
* Make volume binder resilient to races between main schedule loop and async binding operation  ([#72045](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/72045), [@cofyc](https://github.com/cofyc))

* Reduce verbosity of volume reconciler when attaching volumes ([#36900](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/36900), [@codablock](https://github.com/codablock))
* We change the default attach_detach_controller sync period to 1 minute to reduce the query frequency through cloud provider to check whether volumes are attached or not. ([#41363](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/41363), [@jingxu97](https://github.com/jingxu97))

  `sync_partial_proxy_rules_duration_seconds` (in addition to the existing\n`sync_proxy_rules_duration_seconds`),
  giving better information about the duration of each \nsync type, rather than
  only giving a weighted average of the two sync types together. ([#117787](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/117787), [@danwinship](https://github.com/danwinship))

- In "large" clusters, kube-proxy in iptables mode will now sometimes
  leave unused rules in iptables for a while (up to `--iptables-sync-period`)
  before deleting them. This improves performance by not requiring it to
  check for stale rules on every sync. (In smaller clusters, it will still
  remove unused rules immediately once they are no longer used.)

## Changelog since v1.9.4

### Other notable changes

* gce: fixes race condition in ServiceController, where nodes weren't updated in the node sync loop, by updating TargetPools in the ensureExternalLoadBalancer call. ([#58368](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/58368), [@MrHohn](https://github.com/MrHohn))

   * Fix version on startup and `--version` flag

   * Support specifying port number for nameserver in stubDomains

#### kube-proxy
* Features:

  * ratelimit runs of iptables by sync-period flags ([#46266](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/46266), [@thockin](https://github.com/thockin))

  your DRA Pods could be affected by this bug. ([#125644](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/125644), [@sanposhiho](https://github.com/sanposhiho)) [SIG Scheduling and Testing]
- Fix endpoints status out-of-sync when the pod state changes rapidly ([#125675](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/125675), [@tnqn](https://github.com/tnqn)) [SIG Apps, Network and Testing]