- kubeadm: switched the kube-scheduler static Pod to use the endpoints `/livez` (for startup and liveness probes) and `/readyz` (for the readiness probe). Previously, `/healthz` was used for all probes, which is deprecated behavior in the scope of this component. ([#126945](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/126945), [@liangyuanpeng](https://github.com/liangyuanpeng)) [SIG Cluster...

### Bug or Regression

- Fix 121094 by re-introducing the readiness predicate for externalTrafficPolicy: Local services. ([#121116](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/121116), [@alexanderConstantinescu](https://github.com/alexanderConstantinescu)) [SIG Cloud Provider and Network]

### SIG-autoscaling

SIG Autoscaling focused on improving the Horizontal Pod Autoscaling API and algorithm:
- We released autoscaling/v2beta2, which cleans up and unifies the API
- We improved readiness detection and smoothing to work well in a larger variety or use cases

### SIG-Azure

Sig Azure was focused on two primary new alpha features:
- Adding Azure Availability Zones support to cloud provider.

has entered beta and is available by default. You can now [configure startup, liveness, and readiness probes](https://kubernetes.io/docs/tasks/configure-pod-container/configure-liveness-readiness-startup-probes/#configure-probes) for your gRPC app
natively within Kubernetes, without exposing an HTTP endpoint or
using an extra executable.

### Bug or Regression

- Fix 121094 by re-introducing the readiness predicate for externalTrafficPolicy: Local services. ([#121116](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/121116), [@alexanderConstantinescu](https://github.com/alexanderConstantinescu)) [SIG Cloud Provider and Network]

* kubeadm: Detect kubelet readiness and error out if the kubelet is unhealthy ([#51369](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/51369), [@luxas](https://github.com/luxas))

* kubeadm: Detect kubelet readiness and error out if the kubelet is unhealthy ([#51369](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/51369), [@luxas](https://github.com/luxas))

* CoreDNS is now version 1.5.0 ([#78030](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/78030), [@rajansandeep](https://github.com/rajansandeep))
    * A `ready` plugin has been included to report pod readiness
    * The `proxy` plugin has been deprecated. The `forward` plugin is to be used instead.
    * CoreDNS fixes the logging now that kubernetes’ client lib switched to klog from glog.

### Bug or Regression

- Fix 121094 by re-introducing the readiness predicate for externalTrafficPolicy: Local services. ([#121116](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/121116), [@alexanderConstantinescu](https://github.com/alexanderConstantinescu)) [SIG Cloud Provider and Network]

- Pod status updates faster when reacting on probe results. The first readiness probe will be called faster when startup probes succeeded, which will make Pod status as ready faster. ([#98376](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/98376), [@matthyx](https://github.com/matthyx))