using `AffinityInAnnotations=true` in `--feature-gates`, then the 1.7 release is your last opportunity to convert from specifying affinity/anti-affinity using the scheduler.alpha.kubernetes.io/affinity annotation on Pods, to using the Affinity field of PodSpec. Support for the alpha version of node and pod affinity (which uses the scheduler.alpha.kubernetes.io/affinity annotations on Pods) is going away **in Kubernetes 1.8** (not this release, but the next release). If you have not enabled Affini...

- **Stateful Application Support**
  - Enhanced persistence capabilities (eg: `StorageClasses`, new volume plugins)
  - New resources and scheduler features (eg: `ScheduledJob` resource, pod/node affinity/anti-affinity)
- **Cluster Federation**
  - Global Multi-cluster HTTP(S) Ingress across GCE and GKE clusters.
  - Expanded support for federated hybrid-cloud resources including ReplicaSets, Secrets, Namespaces and Events.

- Changed the error message displayed when a pod is trying to attach a volume that does not match the label/selector from "x node(s) had volume node affinity conflict" to "x node(s) didn't match PersistentVolume's node affinity". ([#129887](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/129887), [@rhrmo](https://github.com/rhrmo)) [SIG Scheduling and Storage]

- The calculations for Pod topology spread skew now exclude nodes that
  don't match the node affinity/selector. This may lead to unschedulable pods if you previously had pods
  matching the spreading selector on those excluded nodes (not matching the node affinity/selector),
  especially when the `topologyKey` is not node-level. Revisit the node affinity and/or pod selector in the

- Made node affinity in Persistent Volume mutable. ([#134339](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/134339), [@huww98](https://github.com/huww98)) [SIG API Machinery, Apps and Node]

* Cloud Controller Manager now sets Node.Spec.ProviderID ([#50730](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/50730), [@andrewsykim](https://github.com/andrewsykim))
* Parameterize session affinity timeout seconds in service API for Client IP based session affinity. ([#49850](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/49850), [@m1093782566](https://github.com/m1093782566))

- Kube-scheduler: fixes a 1.29.5 regression that can lead to a scheduler crash when processing pods with affinity that doesn't match a real/valid node ([#125041](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/125041), [@AxeZhan](https://github.com/AxeZhan)) [SIG Scheduling and Testing]

- User can now use component config to configure NodeLabel plugin for the scheduler framework. ([#84297](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/84297), [@liu-cong](https://github.com/liu-cong))
- Optimize inter-pod affinity preferredDuringSchedulingIgnoredDuringExecution type, up to 4x in some cases. ([#84264](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/84264), [@ahg-g](https://github.com/ahg-g))

* Disable session affinity for internal kubernetes service - Backport of [#56690](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/56690) to 1.10 release branch ([#65177](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/65177), [@afritzler](https://github.com/afritzler))

- Moving `WindowsHostProcessContainers` feature to beta ([#106058](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/106058), [@marosset](https://github.com/marosset))
- Node affinity, Node selectors, and tolerations are now mutable for Jobs that are suspended and have never been started ([#105479](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/105479), [@ahg-g](https://github.com/ahg-g))