- GCE Internal LoadBalancer sync loop will now release the ILB IP address upon sync failure. An error in ILB forwarding rule creation will no longer leak IP addresses. ([#97740](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/97740), [@prameshj](https://github.com/prameshj)) [SIG Cloud Provider and Network]

* Kubelet won't evict a static pod with priority `system-node-critical` upon resource pressure. ([#74222](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/74222), [@Huang-Wei](https://github.com/Huang-Wei))

- GCE Internal LoadBalancer sync loop will now release the ILB IP address upon sync failure. An error in ILB forwarding rule creation will no longer leak IP addresses. ([#97740](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/97740), [@prameshj](https://github.com/prameshj)) [SIG Cloud Provider and Network]

* GCP:

  * Bump GLBC version to 0.9.5 - fixes [loss of manually modified GCLB health check settings](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/issues/47559) upon upgrade from pre-1.6.4 to either 1.6.4 or 1.6.5. ([#47567](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/47567), [@nicksardo](https://github.com/nicksardo))

- For the `InPlacePodVerticalScaling` feature, the API server will no longer set the resize status to `Proposed` upon receiving a resize request. ([#130574](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/130574), [@natasha41575](https://github.com/natasha41575)) [SIG Apps, Node and Testing]

- Kubelet terminates pods correctly upon restart, fixing an issue where pods may have not been fully terminated if the kubelet was restarted during pod termination. ([#117433](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/117433), [@bobbypage](https://github.com/bobbypage)) [SIG Node and...

- External credential provider plugins will now have their standard error output logged by kubelet upon failures. ([#117448](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/117448), [@cartermckinnon](https://github.com/cartermckinnon))

- Kubeadm: perform pre-flight validation on host/node name upon `kubeadm init` and `kubeadm join`, showing warnings on non-compliant names ([#99194](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/99194), [@pacoxu](https://github.com/pacoxu))

## Changelog since v1.12.6

### Other notable changes

* Kubelet won't evict a static pod with priority `system-node-critical` upon resource pressure. ([#74222](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/74222), [@Huang-Wei](https://github.com/Huang-Wei))

## Changelog since v1.6.8

### Other notable changes

* StatefulSet: Set hostname/subdomain fields on new Pods in addition to the deprecated annotations, to allow mitigation of Pod DNS issues upon upgrading to Kubernetes v1.7.x. ([#50942](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/50942), [@enisoc](https://github.com/enisoc))