What is the primary purpose of NSX-T's Distributed Firewall?

The primary purpose of NSX-T's Distributed Firewall is to provide fine-grained security policies that can be applied to workloads regardless of their location within the infrastructure. This is fundamental to achieving micro-segmentation, which allows administrators to enforce detailed security rules for applications and services in a distributed environment.

With NSX-T, security policies are attached directly to workloads, such as virtual machines or containers, rather than relying on perimeter-based security measures. This enables the firewall to enforce policies at the virtual network level, ensuring that only permitted traffic flows between workloads, thereby minimizing the attack surface and containing potential threats within specific segments of the network.

This granular approach allows organizations to create tailored security postures based on the specific needs and behaviors of their applications, offering a versatile and dynamic security model. As workloads migrate or change, the security rules adjust automatically with them, providing consistent protection without manual intervention.