- Kube-apiserver now maintains a Lease object to identify itself: 
  - The feature is under feature gate `APIServerIdentity`. 
  - Two flags are added to kube-apiserver: `identity-lease-duration-seconds`, `identity-lease-renew-interval-seconds` ([#95533](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/95533), [@roycaihw](https://github.com/roycaihw)) [SIG API Machinery]

* Fixes a bug in the OpenStack-Heat kubernetes provider, in the handling of differences between the Identity v2 and Identity v3 APIs ([#40105](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/40105), [@sc68cal](https://github.com/sc68cal))

### Container Images

- [`KT-35116`](https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/KT-35116) Enum.valueOf throws inconsistent exception across multiple platforms
- [`KT-59223`](https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/KT-59223) Native Enum.hashCode should return identity hash code, similar to JVM
- [`KT-56637`](https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/KT-56637) Native: 'String.indexOf' matches byte sequences not on the char boundary, which also makes the result of 'split' and 'replace' operation incorrect

- Kubelet could be run with no Azure identity without subscriptionId configured now.
  A sample cloud provider configure is: '{"vmType": "vmss", "useInstanceMetadata": true}'. ([#81500](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/81500), [@feiskyer](https://github.com/feiskyer))

#### Azure

- Renamed API server identity Lease labels to use the key `apiserver.kubernetes.io/identity` ([#114586](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/114586), [@andrewsykim](https://github.com/andrewsykim)) [SIG API Machinery, Apps, Cloud Provider and Testing]

- TaintNodeByCondition has been moved to Beta and is enabled by default.
- Scheduler throughput has been improved by ~50% in large clusters (>2000 nodes).

### SIG-service-catalog
- The Originating Identity feature, which lets the broker know which user that performed an action, is now GA.

* kube-apiserver: a request body of a CREATE/UPDATE/PATCH/DELETE resource operation larger than 100 MB will return a 413 "request entity too large" error. ([#73805](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/73805), [@caesarxuchao](https://github.com/caesarxuchao))

* You now have the ability to quota resources by priority....

/enhancements/tree/master/keps/sig-storage/596-csi-inline-volumes) feature allows CSI volumes to be specified directly in the pod specification for ephemeral use cases. They can be used to inject arbitrary states, such as configuration, secrets, identity, variables or similar information, directly inside pods using a mounted volume. This was initially introduced in 1.15 as an alpha feature, and it moved to GA. This feature is used by some CSI drivers such as the [secret-store CSI driver](https:/...