Ensure that branches created to resolve issues during technet deployment are merged into main

There have been several branches that contain changes made to handle issues during the technet deployment. MRs for those branches, such as !132 (merged), !133 (merged), !130 (merged), edge-operator!28 (merged), and edge-operator!29 (diffs) need to make it back into main so that those changes dont get lost. we also need to make sure that commits that only made it in to the microlab-testing branch get cherry-picked to an appropriate branch, and merged in.