Hi @sharkymcdongles , We recently released a video on this topic, which is available here.

Kubernetes allows us only one storage version so all the CRDs are stored as v2 in the API server and apiext handles the translation between v2 and v3alpha1. This was done to enable a zero downtime migration between Emissary v1.x and v2.x and allow us to make more drastic CRD changes to improve the user experience writing manifests without having to worry about users not being able to migrate without manually updating all of their manifests. Please note that even if you are using v3alpha1 CRDs exclusively, apiext must always be running for all versions of Edge-Stack 2.2+.  It is not possible to disable ‘apiext’.

Here are some notes on how to check for your applied CRD version.

If you run kubectl get mapping/host -o yaml you should see that the api server returns a v2 CRD even if you applied it as a v3alpha1.

If you applied a Mapping/etc. as v3alpha1 it should look like this:
apiVersion: getambassador.io/v2
kind: Mapping
metadata:
  name: grafana
  namespace: defaulta
spec:
  ambassador_id:
  - --apiVersion-v3alpha1-only--default
  prefix: /grafana/
  service: grafana
The designation --apiVersion-v3alpha1-only is automatically added whenever the CRD is being retrieved in v2 format like above.

If you run kubectl get mappings.v3alpha1.getambassador.io grafana -o yaml to ask the API server for the v3alpha1 version of the above CRD (it has to convert it up from v2 since that is how it is stored), then you can see it automatically notices the --apiVersion-v3alpha1-only and removes it:

apiVersion: getambassador.io/v3alpha1
kind: Mapping
metadata:
  name: grafana
  namespace: default
spec:
  ambassador_id:
  - default
  hostname: '*'
  prefix: /grafana/
  service: grafana

If you applied the CRD as a v2 then it won't have the apiVersion-v3alpha1 in the Ambassador ID

Actually we should probably back up a moment. @sharkymcdongles, are you running Emissary or Edge Stack?