- The scheduler skips the `InterPodAffinity` Score plugin when nothing to do with the Pod.
  It will affect some metrics values related to the InterPodAffinity Score plugin. ([#117794](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/117794), [@utam0k](https://github.com/utam0k)) [SIG Scheduling]
- The scheduler skips the `PodTopologySpread` Filter plugin if no spread constraints.

- Scheduler no longer runs the plugin's `Filter` method when its `PreFilter` method returned a Skip status.
  In other words, your `PreFilter`/`Filter` plugin can return a Skip status in `PreFilter` if the plugin does nothing in Filter for that Pod.
  Scheduler skips `NodeAffinity` Filter plugin when `NodeAffinity` Filter plugin has nothing to do with a Pod.

* The scheduler skips pods that use a PVC that either does not exist or is being deleted. ([#55957](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/55957), [@jsafrane](https://github.com/jsafrane))

### Other changes

`post-upgrade` phases. Users can use `kubeadm upgrade node phase addon` to execute the addon upgrade, or use `kubeadm upgrade node --skip-phases addon` to skip the addon upgrade. If you were previously skipping an addon subphase on `kubeadm init` you should now skip the same addon when calling `kubeadm upgrade apply` and `kubeadm upgrade node`. Currently, the `post-upgrade` phase is no-op, and it is mainly used to handle some release-specific post-upgrade tasks. ([#127242](https://github.com/kube...

- Promoted the `CRDValidationRatcheting` feature gate to beta and made it enabled by default.
   ([#121461](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/121461), [@alexzielenski](https://github.com/alexzielenski))

- Kubectl/drain: add skip-wait-for-delete-timeout option. If a pod’s  `DeletionTimestamp` is older than N seconds, skip waiting for the pod.  Seconds must be greater than 0 to skip. ([#85577](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/85577), [@michaelgugino](https://github.com/michaelgugino)) [SIG CLI]

- The `BalancedAllocation` plugin now skips all best-effort (zero-requested) pods. ([#130260](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/130260), [@Bowser1704](https://github.com/Bowser1704))

* This fix prevents a GCE PD volume from being mounted if the udev device link is stale and tries to correct the link. ([#66832](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/66832), [@msau42](https://github.com/msau42))
* skip nodes that have a primary NIC in a 'Failed' provisioningState ([#65412](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/65412), [@yastij](https://github.com/yastij))

    - [HorizontalPodAutoscaler v2 graduates to GA](#horizontalpodautoscaler-v2-graduates-to-ga)
    - [Generic Ephemeral Volume feature graduates to GA](#generic-ephemeral-volume-feature-graduates-to-ga)
    - [Skip Volume Ownership change graduates to GA](#skip-volume-ownership-change-graduates-to-ga)

### Bug or Regression

- Fix: skip instance not found when decoupling vmss from lb ([#105835](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/105835), [@nilo19](https://github.com/nilo19)) [SIG Cloud Provider]