* Default value for expendable pod priority cutoff in GCP deployment of Cluster Autoscaler changed from 0 to -10.
    * action required: users deploying workloads with priority lower than 0 may want to use priority lower than -10 to avoid triggering scale-up.

### Other notable changes

* Metadata Agent Improvements ([#66485](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/66485), [@bmoyles0117](https://github.com/bmoyles0117))

### Tools. JPS

- [`KT-64305`](https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/KT-64305) Kotlin JPS builder requests chunk rebuild with graph implementation
- [`KT-64112`](https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/KT-64112) Avoid using IJ's JPS mappings in Kotlin JPS tests
- [`KT-63799`](https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/KT-63799) Make plugin classpath serialization path agnostic


## 1.9.21

### Compiler

- Avoid caching the Azure VMSS instances whose network profile is nil ([#100948](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/100948), [@feiskyer](https://github.com/feiskyer)) [SIG Cloud Provider]

## Changelog since v1.16.6

## Changes by Kind

### Other (Bug, Cleanup or Flake)

- Bind metrics-server containers to linux nodes to avoid Windows scheduling on kubernetes cluster includes linux nodes and windows nodes ([#87022](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/87022), [@wawa0210](https://github.com/wawa0210)) [SIG Cluster Lifecycle]

- When feature gate `JobTrackingWithFinalizers` is enabled:
  - Limit the number of Pods tracked in a single Job sync to avoid starvation of small Jobs.

setting the `UnauthenticatedHTTP2DOSMitigation` feature gate to `true` (it is disabled by default). An API server fronted by an L7 load balancer that already mitigates these http/2 attacks may choose not to enable the kube-apiserver mitigation to avoid disrupting load balancer → kube-apiserver connections if http/2 requests from multiple clients share the same backend connection. An API server on a private network may choose not to enable the kube-apiserver mitigation to prevent performance regressions...

- Avoid caching the Azure VMSS instances whose network profile is nil ([#100948](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/100948), [@feiskyer](https://github.com/feiskyer)) [SIG Cloud Provider]

### Bug or Regression

- Only declare Job as finished after removing all Pod finalizers to avoid orphan Pods ([#119165](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/119165), [@alculquicondor](https://github.com/alculquicondor)) [SIG Apps and Testing]

- Avoid caching the Azure VMSS instances whose network profile is nil ([#100948](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/100948), [@feiskyer](https://github.com/feiskyer)) [SIG Cloud Provider]

Anyway, the cluster should get back to the proper size after 10 min.

### Deployment