Patent ID: 8839262

Claim:
A method of prescribing copy services relationships for storage resources in a computing environment by a processor device, comprising: organizing the storage resources into a plurality of resource groups that are each uniquely identified by a resource group label, each of the storage resources having at least one of a plurality of resource group attributes associating a storage resource object with the plurality of resource groups and associating at least one policy via the at least one of the plurality of resource group attributes in the plurality of resource groups with the storage resources; defining one of the at least one of the plurality of resource group attributes to specify the at least one policy prescribing the copy services relationships between the storage resources associated with the plurality of resource groups; utilizing, by the at least one policy prescribing the copy services relationships, a resource group label attribute of the resource group to identify at least one of the plurality of resource groups within a storage subsystem of the computing environment, wherein the resource group label attribute is used in conjunction with the at least one of the plurality of resource group attributes in one of the plurality of resource groups and in one of a plurality of user ID accounts; performing at least one of: defining, by the at least one of the plurality of resource group attributes, a pattern adapted to be compared to each of a set of resource group labels such that the resource group labels may be determined to perform one of matching and not matching the pattern, and considering the at least one of the plurality of resource groups to be included within the scope of the resource scope attribute for purposes of making a policy decision to perform one of allowing and disallowing copy services operations; adapting the plurality of resource groups to contain a resource group policy attribute containing a resource scope value that is used to validate resource group labels of an opposing volume resource grouping; performing by the resource scope value one of: precluding all the resource group labels, allowing all the resource group labels, and allowing at least one of the resource group labels by a pattern matching algorithm, and defining the resource group label attribute and the at least one of the plurality of resource group attributes, and further defining a schema for the at least one of the plurality of resource group attributes and the resource group label attribute, thereby giving the scope value authority to perform the at least one of initiation and management of at least one of the copy services relationships on an accessible resource such that the scope of access is greater than those of a plurality of resource scope values that are lower in a hierarchy of the at least one of the copy services relationships.