What functionality does NSX-T provide to enable micro-segmentation?

NSX-T provides distributed firewall capabilities, which are essential for enabling micro-segmentation in a virtualized environment. Micro-segmentation is a security technique that involves dividing the data center's network into smaller segments, allowing for more granular security policies to be applied within each segment.

The distributed firewall operates at the hypervisor level, allowing policies that are applied to virtual machines to be enforced regardless of their network location. This means that protection is not reliant on physical network boundaries, which is ideal for dynamic and flexible cloud environments. By utilizing distributed firewalls, organizations can isolate workloads and enforce security rules based on attributes such as user identity, application, or workload type, enhancing the security posture across the entire infrastructure.

The other options, while relevant to network management and optimizations, do not specifically address the micro-segmentation capability. Enhanced load balancing features support application availability but do not contribute to the concept of micro-segmentation. Virtual IP addressing pertains to how devices are accessed in a network but does not inherently provide the security zones that micro-segmentation offers. Lastly, network performance monitoring tools help in observing and analyzing network health but do not directly relate to the segmentation of traffic for security purposes.