Fortinet FCSS_SDW_AR-7.6 Exam - Topic 1 Question 1 Discussion

When SD-WAN load balancing is required with link quality awareness, FortiOS relies on SLA-based strategies. These strategies evaluate link performance using performance SLAs (latency, jitter, packet loss, MOS) and then make forwarding decisions accordingly.

Option A is correct.

In FortiOS 7.6, when an SLA-based SD-WAN rule has load balancing enabled, FortiGate distributes traffic only across the members that meet the SLA targets. Any member that is out of SLA is excluded from load balancing. This behavior ensures that traffic is not forwarded over degraded links while still allowing load distribution across healthy paths.

Option C is correct.

The lowest cost (SLA) strategy is an SLA-based strategy that considers link quality while also allowing SD-WAN load balancing. When multiple members meet the SLA requirements and have equal cost, FortiGate can load balance traffic across them using the configured hash mode. This makes the lowest cost SLA strategy suitable when both link quality and load balancing are required.

Why the other options are incorrect:

Option B is incorrect because the best quality strategy is designed to select the single best-performing link based on SLA metrics. It does not support SD-WAN load balancing across multiple links.

Option D is incorrect because the best quality strategy does not support load balancing at all, so the statement about round-robin hash mode is invalid.

Therefore, the two correct facts to consider are A and C.