Load Balancing

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.

For more information on configuring load balancing and in-order delivery features, see the Cisco MDS 9000 Family NX-OS Fabric Configuration Guide.