([#122056](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/122056), [@dhenkel92](https://github.com/dhenkel92))
- Improved scheduler performance when no scoring plugins were defined.
   ([#122058](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/122058), [@aleksandra-malinowska](https://github.com/aleksandra-malinowska))
- Improved scheduler performance when no scoring plugins were defined.

        localAlternatingKeysAndValues = alternatingKeysAndValues;
        if (!throwIfDuplicateKeys) {
          // We want to retain only the last-put value for any given key, before sorting.
          // This could be improved, but orderEntriesByValue is rather rarely used anyway.
          localAlternatingKeysAndValues = lastEntryForEachKey(localAlternatingKeysAndValues, size);

### Introducing Windows CSI support alpha for Kubernetes

With the release of Kubernetes 1.18, an alpha version of CSI Proxy for Windows is getting released. CSI proxy enables non-privileged (pre-approved) containers to perform privileged storage operations on Windows. CSI drivers can now be supported in Windows by leveraging CSI proxy.
SIG Storage made a lot of progress in the 1.18 release.

## Major Themes

- StatefulSets (ex-PetSets)
  - StatefulSets are beta now (fixes and stabilization)
- Improved Federation Support
  - New command: `kubefed`
  - DaemonSets
  - Deployments
  - ConfigMaps
- Simplified Cluster Deployment
  - Improvements to `kubeadm`
  - HA Setup for Master

(kernel or iptables versions are insufficient), the kube-proxy will fall-back
to userspace mode. Kube-proxy is much more performant and less
resource-intensive in ‘iptables’ mode.
  * Node stability can be improved by reserving [resources](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/blob/release-1.2/docs/proposals/node-allocatable.md) for the base operating system using --system-reserved and --kube-reserved Kubelet flags

- Switched intstr.Type to sized integer to follow API guidelines and improve compatibility with proto libraries ([#83956](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/83956), [@liggitt](https://github.com/liggitt))
- Client-go: improved allocation behavior of the delaying workqueue when handling objects with far-future ready times. ([#83945](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/83945), [@barkbay](https://github.com/barkbay))

        * requests for a TLS client certificate for any node are approved if the CSR creator has `create` permission on the `certificatesigningrequests` resource and `nodeclient` subresource in the `certificates.k8s.io` API group

## Changelog since v1.28.10

## Changes by Kind

### API Change

- Improved scheduling performance when many nodes, and prefilter returns 1-2 nodes (e.g. daemonset)
  

### Auth

- Fixed OpenID Connect (OIDC) token refresh when the client secret contains a special character. ([#76914](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/76914), [@tsuna](https://github.com/tsuna))
- Improved `kubectl auth can-i` command by warning users when they try to access a resource out of scope. ([#76014](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/76014), [@WanLinghao](https://github.com/WanLinghao))

Other notable changes include:
* CoreDNS replaces kube-dns as the default DNS provider
* Improved user experience for environments without a public internet connection and users using other CRI runtimes than Docker
* Support for structured configuration for the kubelet, which avoids the need to modify the systemd drop-in file