- Adds EndpointSlice integration to kube-proxy, can be enabled with EndpointSlice feature gate. ([#81430](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/81430), [@robscott](https://github.com/robscott))

- Health check of kube-controller-manager now includes each controller. ([#104667](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/104667), [@jiahuif](https://github.com/jiahuif))
- Integration testing now takes periodic Prometheus scrapes from the etcd server.

- Alowed useful inclusion of `-args $prog_args` in KUBE_TEST_ARGS, when doing `make test-integration`. ([#107516](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/107516), [@MikeSpreitzer](https://github.com/MikeSpreitzer))

* The [`kubefed` federation bootstrap tool](https://kubernetes.io/docs/tutorials/federation/set-up-cluster-federation-kubefed/) has also graduated to beta.
* Interaction with container runtimes is now through the CRI interface, enabling easier integration of runtimes with the kubelet. Docker remains the default runtime via Docker-CRI (which moves to beta).
  * **WARNING:** A [known issue](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/issues/44041)

(`k8s.gcr.io`) will continue to be supported for the foreseeable future, but the new name should perform better because it frontends equivalent mirrors in other clouds.  Please point your clusters to the new registry going forward. \n\nAdmission/Policy integrations that have an allowlist of registries need to include `registry.k8s.io` alongside `k8s.gcr.io`.\nAir-gapped environments and image garbage-collection configurations will need to update to pre-pull and preserve required images under `registry.k8s.io`...

  - Support allocatable resources overrides via VMSS tags
  - Add missing stable labels in template nodes
  - Proactively set instance status to deleting on node deletions
  
  ### Cluster API
  - Migrate interaction with the API from using internal types to using Unstructured
  - Improve tests to work better with constrained resources
  - Add support for node auto-discovery
  - Add support for `--cloud-config`

- If a pod has a running instance, the stats of its previously terminated instances will not show up in the kubelet summary stats any more for CRI runtimes such as containerd and cri-o. This keeps the behavior consistent with Docker integration, and fixes an issue that some container Prometheus metrics don't work when there are summary stats for multiple instances of the same pod. ([#77426](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/77426), [@Random-Liu](https://github.com/Random-Liu))...

- Enhanced cloud provider integrations to support optional, per-Node custom labels that can be supplied and applied to Nodes by the node controller. These extra labels will only be applied where the cloud provider integration supports this feature.
   ([#123223](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/123223), [@mmerkes](https://github.com/mmerkes))

* [alpha] Adds support of container metrics in CRI ([docs PR](https://github.com/kubernetes/community/pull/742)) ([kubernetes/features#290](https://github.com/kubernetes/enhancements/issues/290))

    * This keeps the behavior consistent with Docker integration, and fixes an issue that some container Prometheus metrics don't work when there are summary stats for multiple instances of the same pod.