For more information, see [#56357](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/issues/56357).

*   Audit logging is slow because writes to the log are performed synchronously with requests to the log. This issue will be fixed in a future release.

  For more information, see [#53006](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/issues/53006).

- Fix the regression with the slow pods termination. Before this fix pods may take an additional time to terminate - up to one minute. Reversing the change that ensured that CNI resources cleaned up when the pod is removed on API server. ([#97980](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/97980),...

### Other notable changes

* Extend TLS timeouts to work around slow arm64 math/big ([#66264](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/66264), [@joejulian](https://github.com/joejulian))

defined a concrete process for scalability testing, created
documentation for the current scalability thresholds, and defined a new set of
Service Level Indicators (SLIs) and Service Level Objectives (SLOs) for the system.
Here's the release [scalability validation report].

[SIG Scalability]: https://github.com/kubernetes/community/tree/master/sig-scalability

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:

### SIG Scheduling

- Fix the regression with the slow pods termination. Before this fix pods may take an additional time to terminate - up to one minute. Reversing the change that ensured that CNI resources cleaned up when the pod is removed on API server. ([#97980](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/97980),...

### Simplified Multi-point plugin configuration for scheduler

The kube-scheduler is adding a new, simplified config field for Plugins to allow multiple extension points to be enabled in one spot.
The new `multiPoint` plugin field is intended to simplify most scheduler setups for administrators.
Plugins that are enabled via `multiPoint` will automatically be registered for each individual extension point that they implement.

  - build: Use go-runner:buster-v2.0.1 (built using go1.15.1)
  - bazel: Replace --features with Starlark build settings flag
  - hack/lib/util.sh: some bash cleanups
    
    - switched one spot to use kube::logging
    - make kube::util::find-binary return an error when it doesn't find
      anything so that hack scripts fail fast instead of with '' binary not
      found errors.

- Fix incorrectly report scope for request_duration_seconds and request_slo_duration_seconds metrics for POST custom resources API calls. ([#110009](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/110009), [@azylinski](https://github.com/azylinski)) [SIG Instrumentation]