- Graduating `pending_pods`, `preemption_attempts_total`, `preemption_victims` and `schedule_attempts_total` metrics to stable. Also `e2e_scheduling_duration_seconds` is renamed to `scheduling_attempt_duration_seconds` and the latter is graduated to stable. (#105941, @rezakrimi) [SIG Instrumentation, Scheduling and Testing]

- Kubeadm will cleanup the stale data on best effort basis. Stale data will be removed when each reset phase are executed, default etcd data directory will be cleanup when the `remove-etcd-member` phase are executed. ([#110972](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/110972), [@chendave](h...

Besides the above new features, support for Azure Virtual Machine Scale Sets (VMSS) and Cluster-Autoscaler is now stable and considered GA:

- Azure virtual machine scale sets (VMSS) allow you to create and manage identical load balanced VMs that automatically increase or decrease based on demand or a set schedule.

* fix smb remount issue on Windows ([#73661](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/73661), [@andyzhangx](https://github.com/andyzhangx))
* remove stale OutOfDisk condition from kubelet side ([#72507](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/72507), [@dixudx](https://github.com/dixudx))

    * sync time.
 
    * The goal is for administrators to be able to alert on proxies that, for
    * whatever reason, are quite stale.
* Fix a string comparison bug in IPVS graceful termination where UDP real servers are not deleted. ([#78999](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/78999), [@andrewsykim](https://github.com/andrewsykim))

- `kubectl wait` ensures that observedGeneration >= generation to prevent stale state reporting. An example scenario can be found on CRD updates. ([#97408](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/97408), [@KnicKnic](https://github.com/KnicKnic))

### Documentation

* The ability to use kubectl scale jobs is deprecated. All other scale operations remain in place, but the ability to scale jobs will be removed in a future release.  ([#60139](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/60139), [@soltysh](https://github.com/soltysh))

  - Fix unwanted VMSS VMs cache invalidation
  - Enforce setting the number of retries if cloud provider backoff is enabled
  - Don't update capacity if VMSS provisioning state is updating
  - Support allocatable resources overrides via VMSS tags
  - Add missing stable labels in template nodes
  - Proactively set instance status to deleting on node deletions
  
  ### Cluster API

- Fixed a bug in client-go where new clients with customized `Dial`, `Proxy`, `GetCert` config may get stale HTTP transports. ([#95427](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/95427), [@roycaihw](https://github.com/roycaihw)) [SIG API Machinery]

* change azure disk host cache to ReadOnly by default ([#72229](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/72229), [@andyzhangx](https://github.com/andyzhangx))
* Fixes issue with cleaning up stale NFS subpath mounts ([#71804](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/71804), [@msau42](https://github.com/msau42))