hancements/issues/625) to the Container Storage Interface (CSI). SIG Storage worked on bringing CSI to feature parity with in-tree functionality, including functionality like resizing, inline volumes, and more. SIG Storage introduces new alpha functionality in CSI that doesn't exist in the Kubernetes Storage subsystem yet, like volume cloning.

Volume cloning enables users to specify another PVC as a "DataSource" when provisioning a new volume. If the underlying storage system supports...

* Make sure finalizers prevent deletion on storage that supports graceful deletion ([#32351](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/32351), [@caesarxuchao](https://github.com/caesarxuchao))

external cloud providers now waits for the providerID value to be available before untainting it. This ensures that nodes are not declared Ready without necessary information such as the providerID and zone labels, which are required for integrations like load balancers to function correctly. Cloud providers that do not implement the GetInstanceProviderID method will not require the providerID to be set and will not fail to initialize the node for backward compatibility. ([#123713](https://github.c...

- **[beta]** [Taints and tolerations](https://kubernetes.io/docs/concepts/configuration/assign-pod-node/). This feature allows you to specify rules for "repelling" pods from nodes by default, which enables use cases like dedicated nodes and reserving nodes with special features for pods that need those features. We've also added a `NoExecute` taint type that evicts already-running pods, and an associated `tolerationSeconds` field to tolerations to delay the eviction...

- client-go
  - The deprecated versionless API group accessors (like `clientset.Apps()`) have been removed. Use an explicit version instead (like `clientset.AppsV1()`) ([#74422](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/74422), [@liggitt](https://github.com/liggitt))

  
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TLS for secure communication and L7 http-based traffic routing.
     * Graceful Node Shutdown (aka drain) - The new “kubectl drain” command gracefully
evicts pods from nodes in preparation for disruptive operations like kernel
upgrades or maintenance.
     * Custom Metrics for Autoscaling (HorizontalPodAutoscaler API in the Autoscaling
API group): The Horizontal Pod Autoscaling feature now supports custom metrics

- Fix cronjob controller handling of complex schedules, like "30 6-16/4 * * 1-5", for example ([#119138](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/119138), [@kmala](https://github.com/kmala)) [SIG Apps]