About Load Balancing - Cisco MDS 9000 Series Configuration Manual

About PortChannels
S e n d d o c u m e n t a t i o n c o m m e n t s t o m d s f e e d b a c k - d o c @ c i s c o . c o m
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About Load Balancing

Two mechanisms support the load balancing functionality:
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Figure 6-4
When the first frame in a flow is received on an interface for forwarding, link 1 is selected. Each
subsequent frame in that flow is sent over the same link. No frame in SID1 and DID1 utilizes link 2.
Cisco MDS 9000 Family NX-OS Interfaces Configuration Guide
6-4
F ports and NP ports
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TF ports and TNP ports
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Trunking—Trunking permits carrying traffic on multiple VSANs between switches.
See the Cisco MDS 9000 Family NX-OS Fabric Configuration Guide.
Both PortChanneling and trunking can be used between TE ports over EISLs.
Flow based—All frames between source and destination follow the same links for a given flow. That
is, whichever link is selected for the first exchange of the flow is used for all subsequent exchanges.
Exchange based—The first frame in an exchange picks a link and subsequent frames in the exchange
follow the same link. However, subsequent exchanges can use a different link. This provides more
granular load balancing while preserving the order of frames for each exchange.
illustrates how source ID 1 (SID1) and destination ID1 (DID1) based load balancing works.
Chapter 6 Configuring PortChannels
OL-19445-02, Cisco MDS NX-OS Release 4.2(x)