This is the first Kubernetes release for this SIG! In v1.12, SIG Cloud Provider focused on building the processes and infrastructure to better support existing and new cloud providers. Some of these initiatives (many of which are still in progress) are:

- Reporting E2E conformance test results to TestGrid from every cloud provider (in collaboration with SIG Testing & SIG Release)

* kubeadm alpha certs command now skip missing files ([#85092](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/85092), [@fabriziopandini](https://github.com/fabriziopandini))

SIG Storage made a lot of progress in the 1.18 release.
In particular, the following storage features are moving to GA in Kubernetes 1.18:
- Raw Block Support: Allow volumes to be surfaced as block devices inside containers instead of just mounted filesystems.

    * Each deployment method should bind users/groups to the ClusterRoles if they are using this feature.
* Adds AllowPrivilegeEscalation to control whether a process can gain more privileges than its parent process ([#47019](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/47019), [@jessfraz](https://github.com/jessfraz))

## Changelog since v1.28.6

## Changes by Kind

### Feature

- Add process_start_time_seconds to /metrics/slis endpoint of all components ([#122750](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/122750), [@richabanker](https://github.com/richabanker)) [SIG Architecture, Instrumentation and Testing]

- Kubelet.exe on Windows now checks that the process running as administrator and the executing user account is listed in the built-in administrators group.  This is the equivalent to checking the process is running as uid 0. ([#96616](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/96616), [@perithompson](https://github.com/perithompson)) [SIG Node and Windows]

* Disable proxy to loopback and linklocal ([#71980](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/71980), [@micahhausler](https://github.com/micahhausler))
* Do not detach volume if mount in progress ([#71145](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/71145), [@gnufied](https://github.com/gnufied))

Node-local DNS cache feature is available in Alpha. This feature deploys a lightweight DNS caching Daemonset that avoids the conntrack and converts queries from UDP to more reliable TCP.
PodReady++ feature now has `kubectl` CLI support.

Progress was made towards finalizing the IPv6 dual stack support KEP and support for topological routing of services.

### SIG Node

* Return apiserver panics as 500 errors instead terminating the apiserver process. ([#68001](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/68001), [@sttts](https://github.com/sttts))

## Changelog since v1.27.10

## Changes by Kind

### Feature

- Add process_start_time_seconds to /metrics/slis endpoint of all components ([#122750](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/122750), [@richabanker](https://github.com/richabanker)) [SIG Architecture, Instrumentation and Testing]