- kubeadm: Allow users to skip the kube-proxy init addon phase during init and still be able to join a cluster and perform some other minor operations (but not upgrade). ([#82248](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/82248), [@rosti](https://github.com/rosti))

### Action Required

* [action required] Default Flexvolume plugin directory for COS images on GCE is changed to `/home/kubernetes/flexvolume`. ([#58171](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/58171), [@verult](https://github.com/verult))

Africa/Dakar Africa/Dar_es_Salaam Africa/Djibouti Africa/Douala Africa/El_Aaiun Africa/Freetown Africa/Gaborone Africa/Harare Africa/Johannesburg Africa/Juba Africa/Kampala Africa/Khartoum Africa/Kigali Africa/Kinshasa Africa/Lagos Africa/Libreville Africa/Lome Africa/Luanda Africa/Lubumbashi Africa/Lusaka Africa/Malabo Africa/Maputo Africa/Maseru Africa/Mbabane Africa/Mogadishu Africa/Monrovia Africa/Nairobi Africa/Ndjamena Africa/Niamey Africa/Nouakchott Africa/Ouagadougou Africa/Porto-Novo Africa/Sao_Tome...

- Sometimes, the scheduler incorrectly placed a pod in the "unschedulable" queue instead of the "backoff" queue. This happened when some plugin previously declared the pod as "unschedulable" and then in a later attempt encounters some other error. Scheduling of that pod then got delayed by up to five minutes, after which periodic flushing moved the pod back into the "active" queue. ([#120334](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/120334),...

* You can now use `kubeadm token` specifying `--kubeconfig`.  In this case, kubeadm searches the current user home path and the environment variable KUBECONFIG for existing files. If provided, the `--kubeconfig` flag will be honored instead. ([#62850](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/62850), [@neolit123](https://github.com/neolit123))

  - [Changelog since v1.20.5](#changelog-since-v1205)
  - [Important Security Information](#important-security-information-1)
    - [CVE-2021-25735: Validating Admission Webhook does not observe some previous fields](#cve-2021-25735-validating-admission-webhook-does-not-observe-some-previous-fields)
  - [Changes by Kind](#changes-by-kind-9)
    - [API Change](#api-change-2)
    - [Feature](#feature-5)
    - [Bug or Regression](#bug-or-regression-9)

[Before Upgrading](#before-upgrading).

For more information about the release and for the latest documentation,
see the [Kubernetes documentation](https://kubernetes.io/docs/home/).

[Setup topics]: https://kubernetes.io/docs/setup/pick-right-solution/
[SIGs]: https://github.com/kubernetes/community/blob/master/sig-list.md


## Major Themes

For more information about this release and for the latest documentation, see the [Kubernetes documentation](https://kubernetes.io/docs/home/).

## Major themes

Kubernetes is developed by community members whose work is organized into

In some cases, for pure data validation and processing, you can get performance improvements of **20x** or more. This means 2,000% or more. 🤯

When you use **FastAPI**, there's a lot more going on, processing the request and response, handling dependencies, executing **your own code**, and particularly, **waiting for the network**. But you will probably still get some nice performance improvements just from the upgrade.

### SIG-cluster-lifecycle

In 1.12, SIG Cluster lifecycle has focused on improving the user experience in kubeadm, by fixing a number of bugs and adding some new important features.

Here is a list of some of the changes that have been made to kubeadm:

- Kubeadm internal config has been promoted to `v1alpha3`:
  - `v1alpha1` has been removed.