([#123508](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/123508), [@saschagrunert](https://github.com/saschagrunert))
- Dynamic Resource Allocation: DRA drivers can now use "structured parameters" to let the scheduler handle claim allocation.
   ([#123516](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/123516), [@pohly](https://github.com/pohly))

- Don't let aggregated apiservers fail to launch if the external-apiserver-authentication configmap is not found in the cluster. ([#67836](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/67836), [@sttts](https://github.com/sttts))

Added Coordinated Leader Election as Alpha under the `CoordinatedLeaderElection` feature gate. With the feature enabled, the control plane can use LeaseCandidate objects (coordination.k8s.io/v1alpha1 API group) to participate in a leader election and let the kube-apiserver select the best instance according to some strategy. ([#124012](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/124012), [@Jefftree](https://github.com/Jefftree)) [SIG API Machinery, Apps, Auth, Cloud Provider, Etcd, Node, Release,...

- Fix PermissionDenied issue on SMB mount for Windows ([#99550](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/99550), [@andyzhangx](https://github.com/andyzhangx))
- Fix bug that would let the Horizontal Pod Autoscaler scale down despite at least one metric being unavailable/invalid ([#99514](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/99514), [@mikkeloscar](https://github.com/mikkeloscar)) [SIG Apps and Autoscaling]

  An example claim validation rule expression that matches the validation automatically
  applied when username.claim is set to 'email' is 'claims.?email_verified.orValue(true) == true'. 
  By explicitly comparing the value to true, we let type-checking see the result will be a boolean, 

a||s?n+(Ws(e)?"dny":"dn\xed"):n+"dny";case"M":return a||s?"m\u011bs\xedc":"m\u011bs\xedcem";case"MM":return a||s?n+(Ws(e)?"m\u011bs\xedce":"m\u011bs\xedc\u016f"):n+"m\u011bs\xedci";case"y":return a||s?"rok":"rokem";case"yy":return a||s?n+(Ws(e)?"roky":"let"):n+"lety"}}function Es(e,a,t,s){var n={m:["eine Minute","einer Minute"],h:["eine Stunde","einer Stunde"],d:["ein Tag","einem Tag"],dd:[e+" Tage",e+" Tagen"],w:["eine Woche","einer Woche"],M:["ein Monat","einem Monat"],MM:[e+" Monate",e+" Monaten"],y:["ein...

- Introduce scheduling.k8s.io/v1alpha1 Workload API to allow for expressing workload-level scheduling requirements and let kube-scheduler act on those. ([#134564](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/134564), [@macsko](https://github.com/macsko)) [SIG API Machinery, Apps, CLI, Etcd, Scheduling and Testing]

  - warn - perform server-side validation and warn on any invalid fields (but ultimately let the request succeed by dropping any invalid fields from the object). If validation is not available on the server, perform no validation.

* Support configuring the Azure load balancer idle connection timeout for services ([#66045](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/66045), [@cpuguy83](https://github.com/cpuguy83))
* Let service controller retry creating load balancer when persistUpdate failed due to conflict. ([#68087](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/68087), [@grayluck](https://github.com/grayluck))