- The Pods and Pod controllers that are exempted from the PodSecurity admission process are now marked with the `pod-security.kubernetes.io/exempt: user/namespace/runtimeClass` annotation, based on what caused the exemption.
  
  The enforcement level that allowed or denied a Pod during PodSecurity admission is now marked by the `pod-security.kubernetes.io/enforce-policy` annotation.
  

- Added new option to the `InterPodAffinity` scheduler plugin to ignore existing
  pods` preferred inter-pod affinities if the incoming pod has no preferred inter-pod
  affinities. This option can be used as an optimization for higher scheduling throughput
  (at the cost of an occasional pod being scheduled non-optimally/violating existing
  pods preferred inter-pod affinities). To enable this scheduler option, set the

  Similarly you can also access  kubelet's `/pods` endpoint to fetch a list of Pods bound to that node by granting the caller `nodes/pods` permission in RBAC.
  Similarly you can also access kubelet's `/configz` endpoint to fetch kubelet's configuration by granting the caller `nodes/configz` permission in RBAC.

affinity/anti-affinity](https://kubernetes.io/docs/concepts/configuration/assign-pod-node/) and **[beta]** [pod affinity/anti-affinity](https://kubernetes.io/docs/concepts/configuration/assign-pod-node/). Node affinity/anti-affinity allow you to specify rules for restricting which node(s) a pod can schedule onto, based on the labels on the node. Pod affinity/anti-affinity allow you to specify rules for spreading and packing pods relative to one another, across arbitrary topologies (node, zone, etc.) These...

- Fix a bug that Pods could stuck in the unschedulable pod pool 
  if they're rejected by PreEnqueue plugins that could change its result by a change in resources apart from Pods.
  
  DRA plugin is the only plugin that meets the criteria of the bug in in-tree, 
  and hence if you have `DynamicResourceAllocation` feature flag enabled, 

- TerminationGracePeriodSeconds from pod spec is respected for the mirror pod
  Static pods will be deleted gracefully ([#99035](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/99035), [@ehashman](https://github.com/ehashman)) [SIG Node and Testing]

resources of running and terminating pods when deciding to accept new pods, since terminating pods are still holding on to those resources. This stricter handling may surface to end users as pod rejections when creating pods that are scheduled to mostly full nodes that have other terminating pods holding the resources the new pods need. The most likely error would be a pod set to `Failed` phase with reason set to `OutOfCpu` or `OutOfMemory`, but any resource on the node that has some fixed limit (including...

- Critical pods can now be created in namespaces other than kube-system. To limit critical pods to the kube-system namespace, cluster admins should create an admission configuration file limiting critical pods by default, and a matching quota object in the `kube-system` namespace permitting critical pods in that namespace. See https://kubernetes.io/docs/concepts/policy/resource-quotas/#limit-priority-clas...

  When the scheduling queue receives a cluster event, before moving each Pod from unschedulable pod pool to activeQ/backoffQ, it will call QueueingHintFn of plugins that rejected each Pod in the previous scheduling cycle.
  Depending on the value returned from QueueingHintFn, the scheduling queue changes how it queues each Pod:
  - if more than one QueueingHintFn returns QueueImmediately, it queues Pod to activeQ.

net.beta.kubernetes.io/network-policy annotation on Namespaces (used to opt in to isolation) has been removed. Instead, isolation is now determined on a per-pod basis. A NetworkPolicy may target a pod for isolation by including the pod in its spec.podSelector. Targeted Pods accept the traffic specified in the respective NetworkPolicy (and nothing else). Pods not targeted by any NetworkPolicy accept all traffic by default. ([#39164](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/39164), [@danwinship](https...