A company has a third-party security appliance deployed in its data center.

Comprehensive Detailed Explanation

Virtual Network Based Tunneling (VNBT) is the appropriate technology for this use case because:

Traffic Steering: VNBT enables traffic from specific clients or devices to be tunneled through a predefined network path. This allows traffic to pass through intermediate devices such as third-party security appliances.

Policy Enforcement: VNBT can be configured to route traffic based on roles, VLANs, or other policy definitions, ensuring that only specified traffic flows are redirected to the security appliance.

Scalability: This approach simplifies the redirection of traffic without requiring complex physical rewiring or changes to the underlying network topology.

Other Options:

MC-LAG: Primarily used for high-availability and redundancy in multi-chassis link aggregation scenarios, not for traffic redirection through appliances.

Network Analytics Engine (NAE): Used for monitoring and analytics, not traffic steering or forwarding.

Device Profiles: Helps automate switch port configurations for specific device types but does not handle traffic redirection.

References

AOS-CX Virtual Network Based Tunneling (VNBT) documentation.

Aruba Switch Architecture and Traffic Flow Control Best Practices Guide.