- Don't use a custom dialer for the kubelet if is not rotating certificates, so we can reuse TCP connections and have only one between the apiserver and the kubelet.

- Fixed `garbage collection` of dangling `VolumeAttachments` for `PersistentVolumes` migrated to CSI on startup of `kube-controller-manager`. ([#102176](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/102176), [@timebertt](https://github.com/timebertt))

- The kubelet no longer forcefully closes active connections on heartbeat failures, using the HTTP2 health check mechanism to detect broken connections. Users can force the previous behavior of the kubelet by setting the environment variable DISABLE_HTTP2. ([#108107](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/108107), [@aojea](https://github.com/aojea))...

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` as well as `k8s.gcr.io`. ([#109938](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/109938), [@dims](https://github.com/dims))

## Changes...

   ([#121912](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/121912), [@JoelSpeed](https://github.com/JoelSpeed))
- Allowed container runtimes to fix an image garbage collection bug by adding an `image_id` field to the CRI Container message.
   ([#123508](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/123508), [@saschagrunert](https://github.com/saschagrunert))

- IPVS: Disabled graceful termination for UDP traffic to solve issues with high number of UDP connections (DNS / syslog in particular) ([#77802](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/77802), [@lbernail](https://github.com/lbernail))

* Add conntrack as a dependency of kubelet and kubeadm when building rpms and debs. Both require conntrack to handle cleanup of connections. ([#71540](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/71540), [@mauilion](https://github.com/mauilion))
* UDP connections now support graceful termination in IPVS mode ([#71515](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/71515), [@lbernail](https://github.com/lbernail))

* custom resources that use unconventional pluralization now work properly with kubectl and garbage collection ([#50012](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/50012), [@deads2k](https://github.com/deads2k))

  1. Populate new `RuntimeHandler` field in CRI's `ImageSpec` struct during image pulls from container runtimes.
  2. Pass `runtimeHandler` field in `RemoveImage()` call to container runtime in `kubelet`'s image garbage collection. ([#121456](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/121456), [@kiashok](https://github.com/kiashok))

- Renamed the feature gate for CEL in Admission Control to `ValidatingAdmissionPolicy`. ([#113735](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/113735), [@cici37](https://github.com/cici37))
- Reworded log message upon image garbage collection failure to be more clear. ([#112631](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/112631), [@tzneal](https://github.com/tzneal)) [SIG Node]