- The new `-gce-zones` flag on the `e2e.test` binary instructs tests that check for information about how the cluster interacts with the cloud to limit their queries to the provided zone list. If not specified, the current behavior of asking the cloud provider for all available zones in multi zone clusters is preserved. ([#98787](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/98787), [@smarterclayton](htt...

	    * cloudprovider_gce_api_request_duration_seconds{request, region, zone}

	    * cloudprovider_gce_api_request_errors{request, region, zone}

	    * request is the specific function that is used.

	    * region is the target region (Will be "<n/a>" if not applicable)

	    * zone is the target zone (Will be "<n/a>" if not applicable)

- Kube-apiserver --help flag help is now printed in sections. ([#64517](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/64517), [@sttts](https://github.com/sttts))
- Azure managed disks now support availability zones and new parameters `zoned`, `zone` and `zones` are added for AzureDisk storage class. ([#66553](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/66553), [@feiskyer](https://github.com/feiskyer)) Courtesy of SIG Azure

        * `beta.kubernetes.io/instance-type`
        * `beta.kubernetes.io/os`
        * `beta.kubernetes.io/arch`
        * `failure-domain.kubernetes.io/zone`
        * `failure-domain.kubernetes.io/region`
        * `failure-domain.beta.kubernetes.io/zone`
        * `failure-domain.beta.kubernetes.io/region`
        * `[*.]kubelet.kubernetes.io/*`
        * `[*.]node.kubernetes.io/*`

    * pv_collector_unbound_pvc_count
* Deprecate the beta labels for zones ("failure-domain.beta.kubernetes.io/zone") and  ([#81431](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/81431), [@andrewsykim](https://github.com/andrewsykim))
    * regions ("failure-domain.beta.kubernetes.io/region") in favor of their GA equivalents:
    * "topology.kubernetes.io/zone" and "topology.kubernetes.io/region".

node ready. This is required because previously, if there were errors of communication with the cloud-provider on the cloud-controller-manager, nodes may have been declared Ready without having this field or the zone labels, and the information was never reconciled. The providerID and the zone labels are required for integrations like loadbalancers to work correctly. Users still can opt-out to this new behavior by setting the feature flag OptionalProviderID in the cloud-controller-manager. ([#12333...

### StatefulSet

* Fix zone placement heuristics so that multiple mounts in a StatefulSet pod are created in the same zone ([#40910](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/40910), [@justinsb](https://github.com/justinsb))

### Autoscaling

- Horizontal Pod Autoscaling can now scale targets up even when one or more metrics are invalid/unavailable, as long as one metric indicates a scale up should occur. ([#78503](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/78503), [@gjtempleton](https://github.com/gjtempleton))


### AWS

- Because of the implementation logic of `time.Format` in golang, the displayed time zone is not consistent. ([#102366](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/102366), [@cndoit18](https://github.com/cndoit18))

- Fixes spammy incorrect "Ignoring same-zone topology hints for service since no hints were provided for zone" messages in the kube-proxy logs. ([#133527](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/133527), [@danwinship](https://github.com/danwinship)) [SIG Network]