- Improved FormatMap: Improves performance by about 4x, or nearly 2x in the worst case ([#112661](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/112661), [@aimuz](https://github.com/aimuz)) [SIG Node]

## 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

        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);

(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

- Azure VMSS LoadBalancerBackendAddressPools updating has been improved with sequential-sync + concurrent-async requests. ([#88699](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/88699), [@feiskyer](https://github.com/feiskyer)) [SIG Cloud Provider]

For the 1.8 release, SIG API Machinery focused on stability and on ecosystem enablement. Features include the ability to break large LIST calls into smaller chunks, improved support for API server customization with either custom API servers or Custom Resource Definitions, and client side event spam filtering.

[Sig API Machinery]: https://github.com/kubernetes/community/tree/master/sig-api-machinery

## 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)
  

- 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))

### 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))

access-authn-authz/admission-controllers/#noderestriction). In authentication, we added alpha-level support for automounting improved service account tokens through projected volumes. We also enabled [audience validation in TokenReview](https://kubernetes.io/docs/reference/generated/kubernetes-api/v1.13/#tokenreview-v1-authentication-k8s-io) for the new tokens for improved scoping. Under audit logging, the new alpha-level "dynamic audit configuration" adds support for [dynamically registering webhooks...