- Kube-apiserver: the `--encryption-provider-config` file is now loaded with strict deserialization, which fails if the config file contains duplicate or unknown fields. This protects against accidentally running with config files that are malformed, mis-indented, or have typos in field names, and getting unexpected behavior. When `--encryption-provider-config-automatic-reload` is used, new encryption config files that contain...

- Introducing Memory quality of service support with `cgroups v2 (Alpha)`. The `MemoryQoS` feature is now in Alpha. This allows `kubelet` running with `cgroups v2` to set memory QoS at container, pod and QoS level to protect and guarantee better memory quality. This feature can be enabled through feature gate Memory QoS. ([#102970](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/102970), [@borgerli](https://github.com/borgerli))

* Support KUBE_MAX_PD_VOLS on Azure ([#41398](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/41398), [@codablock](https://github.com/codablock))
* Projected volume plugin ([#37237](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/37237), [@jpeeler](https://github.com/jpeeler))

- Kubeadm: add startup probes for static Pods to protect slow starting containers ([#91179](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/91179), [@SataQiu](https://github.com/SataQiu)) [SIG Cluster Lifecycle]

- E2e tests wait for kube-root-ca.crt to be populated in namespaces for use with projected service account tokens, reducing delays starting those test pods and errors in the logs. ([#108860](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/108860), [@eddiezane](https://github.com/eddiezane)) [SIG Testing]

- Number of errors reported to the metric `storage_operation_duration_seconds_count` for emptyDir decreased significantly because previously one error was reported for each projected volume created. ([#117022](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/117022), [@mpatlasov](https://github.com/mpatlasov)) [SIG Storage]