* Add a feature to the scheduler to score fewer than all nodes in every scheduling cycle. This can improve performance of the scheduler in large clusters. ([#66733](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/66733), [@bsalamat](https://github.com/bsalamat))

- Expand scheduler priority functions and scheduling framework plugins' node score range to [0, 100]. Note: this change is internal and does not affect extender and RequestedToCapacityRatio custom priority, which are still expected to provide a [0, 10] range. ([#83522](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/83522), [@drav...

Replicaset**: the DELETE request of a replication controller or a replicaset becomes asynchronous by default. The object will continue to exist in the key-value store for some time. The API server will set its metadata.deletionTimestamp, add the "orphan" finalizer to its metadata.finalizers. The object will be deleted from the key-value store after the garbage collector orphans its dependents. Please refer to this [user-guide](http://kubernetes.io/docs/user-guide/garbage-collector/) for more information...

### Promoted CRD Validation Expression Language to Beta

- Refactor the local nodeipam range allocator and instrument the cidrset used to store the allocated CIDRs with the following metrics:
  "cidrset_cidrs_allocations_total",
  "cidrset_cidrs_releases_total",
  "cidrset_usage_cidrs",

the mounting process where the volumes are ACL’ed on the pods’ service account without handing out unnecessary permissions to the CSI drivers’ service account. This feature is especially important for secret-handling CSI drivers, such as the secrets-store-csi-driver. Since these tokens can be rotated and short-lived, this feature also provides a knob for CSI drivers to receive `NodePublishVolume` RPC calls periodically with the new token. This knob is also useful when volumes are short-lived, e.g. certificates....

- Return error when the scoring plugin returns score out of range `[0, 100]`. ([#81015](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/81015), [@draveness](https://github.com/draveness))
- Use a named array instead of a score array in normalizing-score phase. ([#80901](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/80901), [@draveness](https://github.com/draveness))

### API Change

- Fixed bug with leads to Node goes `Not-ready` state when credentials for vCenter stored in a secret and Zones feature is in use. Zone labels setup moved to KCM component, kubelet skips this step during startup in such case. If credentials stored in cloud-provider config file as plaintext current behaviour does not change and no action required. For proper functioning `kube-system:vsphere-legacy-cloud-provider`...

* Admit critical pods in the kubelet ([#38836](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/38836), [@bprashanth](https://github.com/bprashanth))
* assign -998 as the oom_score_adj for critical pods (e.g. kube-proxy) ([#39114](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/39114), [@dchen1107](https://github.com/dchen1107))