- Add `permit_wait_duration_seconds` metric to the scheduler. ([#84011](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/84011), [@liu-cong](https://github.com/liu-cong))

### Deprecated/changed metrics

  - labels/annotations that are consumed by any cloud specific controllers

In addition to the above, SIG Cloud Provider has been focusing on a long running effort to remove cloud provider code from kubernetes/kubernetes.

### SIG-cluster-lifecycle

* Pod log attempts are now reported in apiserver prometheus metrics with verb `CONNECT` since they can run for very long periods of time. ([#50123](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/50123), [@WIZARD-CXY](https://github.com/WIZARD-CXY))

- Fixed a bug where startupProbe stopped working after a container's first restart ([#101093](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/101093), [@wzshiming](https://github.com/wzshiming)) [SIG Node]
- Fixed port-forward memory leak for long-running and heavily used connections. ([#99839](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/99839), [@saschagrunert](https://github.com/saschagrunert)) [SIG API Machinery and Node]

  and `sync_partial_proxy_rules_duration_seconds` (in addition to the existing
  `sync_proxy_rules_duration_seconds`), to give better information about how long
  each sync type is taking, rather than only giving a weighted average of the two
  sync types together. ([#117787](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/117787), [@danwinship](https://github.com/danwinship)) [SIG Network]

* Google Compute Engine PD Detach fails if node no longer exists ([29358](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/issues/29358))
* Mounting (only 'default-token') volume takes a long time when creating a batch of pods  (parallelization issue) ([28616](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/issues/28616))

* Fix strategic merge diff list diff bug ([#26418](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/26418), [@AdoHe](https://github.com/AdoHe))
* AWS: Fix long-standing bug in stringSetToPointers ([#26331](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/26331), [@therc](https://github.com/therc))

- `watch.Until` now works for long durations. ([#67350](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/67350), [@tnozicka](https://github.com/tnozicka))

- Fix clearing of rate-limiter for the queue of checks for cleaning stale pod disruption conditions. 
  The bug could result in the PDB synchronization updates firing too often or the pod disruption cleanups taking too long to happen. ([#114780](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/114780), [@mimowo](https://github.com/mimowo)) [SIG Apps]

  is beta but disabled by default. ([#120198](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/120198), [@pacoxu](https://github.com/pacoxu))
- `kubectl` will not support the `/swagger-2.0.0.pb-v1` endpoint that has been long deprecated. ([#119410](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/119410), [@Jefftree](https://github.com/Jefftree))
- `scheduler`: handling of unschedulable pods because a `ResourceClass` is missing