- Kubeadm: added the experimental (alpha) feature gate `EtcdLearnerMode` that allows etcd members to be joined as learner and only then promoted as voting members ([#113318](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/113318), [@pacoxu](https://github.com/pacoxu))

* Add automatic etcd 3.2->3.1 and 3.1->3.0 minor version rollback support to gcr.io/google_container/etcd images. For HA clusters, all members must be stopped before performing a rollback. ([#59298](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/59298), [@jpbetz](https://github.com/jpbetz))

- Kubeadm: fix a bug where "kubeadm join" would not properly handle missing names for existing etcd members. ([#97372](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/97372), [@ihgann](https://github.com/ihgann)) [SIG Cluster Lifecycle]

* Add automatic etcd 3.2->3.1 and 3.1->3.0 minor version rollback support to gcr.io/google_container/etcd images. For HA clusters, all members must be stopped before performing a rollback. ([#59298](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/59298), [@jpbetz](https://github.com/jpbetz))

- Kubeadm: increase robustness for "kubeadm join" when adding etcd members on slower setups ([#90645](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/90645), [@neolit123](https://github.com/neolit123)) [SIG Cluster Lifecycle]

[Setup topics]: https://kubernetes.io/docs/setup/pick-right-solution/
[SIGs]: https://github.com/kubernetes/community/blob/master/sig-list.md


## Major Themes

Kubernetes is developed by community members whose work is organized into
[Special Interest Groups][]. For the 1.8 release, each SIG provides the
themes that guided their work.

 - Kubeadm: increase robustness for "kubeadm join" when adding etcd members on slower setups ([#90645](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/90645), [@neolit123](https://github.com/neolit123)) [SIG Cluster Lifecycle]

### SIG-ibmcloud

As a newly created SIG, the SIG-ibmcloud has mainly focused on SIG set up, sharing IBM Clouds ongoing Kubernetes work like scalability tests, Kubernetes upgrade strategy etc. with the SIG members and start working on processes to move cloud provider code to a public GitHub repo.

### SIG-instrumentation

No feature work, but a large refactoring of metrics-server as well as a number of bug fixes.

- Kubeadm: modified the etcd static Pod `liveness` and `readiness` probes to use a new etcd `v3.5.3+` HTTP(s) health check endpoint `/health?serializable=true` that allows to track the health of individual etcd members and not fail all members if a single member is not healthy in the etcd cluster. ([#110072](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/110072), [@neolit123](https://github.com/neolit123))

* Upgrade to etcd client 3.3.17 to fix bug where etcd client does not parse IPv6 addresses correctly when members are joining, and to fix bug where failover on multi-member etcd cluster fails certificate check on DNS mismatch ([#83968](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/83968), [@jpbetz](https://github.com/jpbetz))