# Set Up Tools to Make DOKS Cluster Operationally Ready

DigitalOcean Kubernetes (DOKS) is a Kubernetes service with a fully managed control plane, high availability, and autoscaling. DOKS integrates with standard Kubernetes toolchains and DigitalOcean’s load balancers, volumes, CPU and GPU Droplets, API, and CLI.

You can set up a variety of tools to make your DigitalOcean Kubernetes (DOKS) cluster operationally ready. Your operationally-ready DOKS cluster can have a set up as shown below, which includes:

- Setting up an ingress controller using Ambassador or nginx

  **Note**: If your cluster uses [VPC-native networking](https://docs.digitalocean.com/products/kubernetes/details/features/index.html.md#vpc-native-networking) and runs Kubernetes 1.33 or later, you can use the built-in [Gateway API](https://docs.digitalocean.com/products/kubernetes/how-to/use-gateway-api/index.html.md) instead.
- Installing apps such as Prometheus to monitor the cluster
- Installing apps such as Loki to aggregate logs
- Configuring backups and restoration using Velero or Trilio

![Architecture overview diagram showing the operational readiness starter kit components and their interactions.](https://docs.digitalocean.com/screenshots/kubernetes/starter-kit-arch-overview.7e5709bd0ae7dc8c45a6c187d876ec4f8b9b4935cca649b026d9adf34ebe6f20.png)

This tutorial series consists of three parts:

[DOKS Operational Readiness, Part 1: Install the NGINX Ingress Controller](https://docs.digitalocean.com/products/kubernetes/getting-started/operational-readiness/install-nginx-ingress-controller/index.html.md): Install the NGINX ingress controller and configure HTTP rules for the two deployed backend services.

[DOKS Operational Readiness, Part 2: Enable HTTPS](https://docs.digitalocean.com/products/kubernetes/getting-started/operational-readiness/enable-https/index.html.md): Configure production-ready TLS certificates with Cert-Manager using the HTTP-01 challenge.

[DOKS Operational Readiness, Part 3: Configure Wildcard Certificates](https://docs.digitalocean.com/products/kubernetes/getting-started/operational-readiness/configure-wildcard-certificates/index.html.md): Configure production-ready TLS certificates with Cert-Manager using the DNS-01 challenge to support wildcard certificates.