* The podGC controller will now always run, irrespective of the value supplied to the "terminated-pod-gc-threshold" flag supplied to the controller manager.  ([#35476](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/35476), [@foxish](https://github.com/foxish))

- Kubeadm now distinguishes between generated and user supplied component configs, regenerating the former ones if a config upgrade is required ([#86070](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/86070), [@rosti](https://github.com/rosti)) [SIG Cluster Lifecycle]

  - The label applied to control-plane nodes "node-role.kubernetes.io/master" is now deprecated and will be removed in a future release after a GA deprecation period.
  - Introduce a new label "node-role.kubernetes.io/control-plane" that will be applied in parallel to "node-role.kubernetes.io/master" until the removal of the "node-role.kubernetes.io/master" label.

### Quality of Service for memory resources

- Kubeadm: added support for dry running `kubeadm reset`. The new flag `kubeadm reset --dry-run` is similar to the existing flag for `kubeadm init/join/upgrade` and allows you to see what changes would be applied. ([#107512](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/107512), [@SataQiu](https://github.com/SataQiu))

- Kubeadm: add support for dry running `kubeadm join`. The new flag `kubeadm join --dry-run` is similar to the existing flag for `kubeadm init/upgrade` and allows you to see what changes would be applied. ([#103027](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/103027), [@Haleygo](https://github.com/Haleygo))

- Kubeadm: enhanced the "patches" functionality to be able to patch kubelet config files containing `v1beta1.KubeletConfiguration`....

- 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))

### kubectl

#### New Commands
- `apply set-last-applied` *updates the applied-applied-configuration annotation* ([#41694](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/41694), [@shiywang](https://github.com/shiywang))
- `kubectl apply view-last-applied` *viewing the last configuration file applied* ([#41146](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/41146), [@shiywang](https://github.com/shiywang))

  - `GCERegionalPersistentDisk`

## Metrics Changes

### Added metrics

- The metric `kube_proxy_sync_proxy_rules_last_timestamp_seconds` is now available, indicating the last time that kube-proxy successfully applied proxying rules. ([#74027](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/74027), [@squeed](https://github.com/squeed))