* Fix a scalability issue where high rates of event writes degraded etcd performance. ([#64539](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/64539), [@ccding](https://github.com/ccding))
* "kubectl delete" no longer waits for dependent objects to be deleted when removing parent resources ([#65908](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/65908), [@juanvallejo](https://github.com/juanvallejo))

* Improve Azure instance metadata handling by adding caches. ([#70353](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/70353), [@feiskyer](https://github.com/feiskyer))
* adding cn-northwest-1 for AWS China Ningxia region ([#70155](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/70155), [@pahud](https://github.com/pahud))

### Container Images

All container images are available as manifest lists and support the described
architectures. It is also possible to pull a specific architecture directly by
adding the "-$ARCH" suffix  to the container image name.

name | architectures
---- | -------------

* Fix a scalability issue where high rates of event writes degraded etcd performance. ([#64539](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/64539), [@ccding](https://github.com/ccding))
* Properly manage security groups for loadbalancer services on OpenStack. ([#65373](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/65373), [@multi-io](https://github.com/multi-io))

* Fix a scalability issue where high rates of event writes degraded etcd performance. ([#64539](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/64539), [@ccding](https://github.com/ccding))
* Fixed API server panic during concurrent GET or LIST requests with non-empty `resourceVersion`. ([#65092](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/65092), [@sttts](https://github.com/sttts))

### Container Images

All container images are available as manifest lists and support the described
architectures. It is also possible to pull a specific architecture directly by
adding the "-$ARCH" suffix  to the container image name.

name | architectures
---- | -------------

* Bump GCE ContainerVM to container-vm-v20170201 to address CVE-2016-9962. ([#40828](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/40828), [@zmerlynn](https://github.com/zmerlynn))
* Adding vmdk file extension for vmDiskPath in vsphere DeleteVolume ([#40538](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/40538), [@divyenpatel](https://github.com/divyenpatel))

### Container Images

All container images are available as manifest lists and support the described
architectures. It is also possible to pull a specific architecture directly by
adding the "-$ARCH" suffix  to the container image name.
name | architectures
---- | -------------

### ConfigMap
* Volumes and environment variables populated from ConfigMap and Secret objects can now tolerate the named source object or specific keys being missing, by adding `optional: true` to the volume or environment variable source specifications. ([#39981](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/39981), [@fraenkel](https://github.com/fraenkel))

    - kubeadm: implemented CRI detection for Windows worker nodes ([#78053](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/78053), [@ksubrmnn](https://github.com/ksubrmnn))
- Worked toward support for Windows Server version 1903, including adding Windows support for preserving the destination IP as the VIP when loadbalancing with DSR. ([#74825](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/74825), [@ksubrmnn](https://github.com/ksubrmnn))