This release introduces significant performance enhancements for high-concurrency workloads, including a re-engineered distributed locking mechanism and optimized I/O operations. Data integrity is improved with S3-aligned checksum handling for `CopyObject`, and administrative overhead is reduced with automated, case-insensitive LDAP policy management.

### New Features

*   **Accelerated Single-Object Version Listing**: The `ListObjectVersions` API call can now be optimized for a single object by using the `X-Minio-Single-Object: true` header, dramatically improving performance when retrieving an object's version history. (#968)

### Improvements

*   **Enhanced Data Integrity for Copied Objects**: The `CopyObject` API now generates correct, S3-compatible checksums for destination objects, ensuring data integrity, especially for objects originally uploaded in multiple parts. (#985)
*   **Streamlined LDAP Policy Management**: LDAP user and group DNs are now handled case-insensitively, simplifying administration. Legacy case-sensitive policy mappings are migrated automatically upon upgrade. (#954)
*   **Optimized Distributed Locking**: The internal locking mechanism has been re-engineered to reduce contention and improve performance in high-concurrency environments. (#967, #988)
*   **Faster Local Disk Reads**: Read throughput for objects on local disks is increased by optimizing data streaming for Direct I/O (O_DIRECT), reducing server CPU usage. (#930)
*   **Reduced Server Startup Time**: IAM configurations are now loaded concurrently, significantly decreasing server startup and cache reload times in deployments with many policies. (#964)
*   **Accurate Health Metrics for Offline Drives**: System health metrics now correctly report the status of offline drives, providing a complete view for monitoring and diagnostics. (#974)
*   **Updated Management Console**: The web-based Console has been updated, incorporating various fixes and user experience enhancements. (#972, #996)

### Bug Fixes

*   **Prevented Excessive Log Growth**: Implemented a cap on logging metadata tags per request to prevent uncontrolled log file growth and associated performance degradation. (#993)
*   **Resolved Logging Queue Stalls**: The system now discards oversized log events that could previously block the entire logging queue, ensuring continuous log processing. (#995)
*   **Improved Error Reporting for Uploads**: The server now returns a more precise 'Incomplete Body' error when a client connection is closed unexpectedly during an upload, improving diagnostics. (#997)
*   **Eliminated Performance Stalls Under High Load**: Optimized the on-disk format management system to prevent read operations from being blocked during background refreshes. (#991)
*   **Corrected Object Read Errors**: Resolved a rare issue where an object could become unreadable after a copy operation due to incorrect inline metadata flags. (#975)
*   **Addressed Authentication Resource Leak**: Fixed a resource leak during the decompression of user group information within the authentication system. (#977)

### Breaking Changes

*   **Prometheus Metric Renamed**: To more accurately reflect its function, the Prometheus metric `minio_process_locks_abandoned_total` has been renamed to `minio_process_locks_expired_total`. Administrators must update monitoring dashboards and alerting rules that use this metric. (#967)