What is volume masking?

Volume masking refers to the process of controlling which host or server has access to specific storage volumes in a storage area network (SAN) environment. This is crucial for managing permissions and ensuring that only designated systems can interact with certain volumes, thus enhancing data security and integrity.

By implementing volume masking, storage administrators can prevent unwanted access from different hosts, which is particularly important in multi-tenant environments or organizations where sensitive data needs to be protected from unauthorized access. This capability allows for better management of resources and ensures that critical data remains isolated and secure.

The other choices relate to different aspects of storage management. Creating additional storage volumes pertains to capacity management, optimizing volume performance focuses on enhancing the speed and efficiency of data access, and securing data from unauthorized access generally involves using encryption and other security protocols rather than volume masking specifically.