At least one additional resource group attribute is defined to specify at least one policy prescribing a copy services relationship between two of the storage resources. Pursuant to a request to establish the copy services relationship between the two storage resources, each of the two storage resources exchange resource group labels corresponding to which of the plurality of resource groups the two storage resources are assigned, and each of the two storage resources validates the requested copy services relationship and the resource group label of an opposing one of the two storage resources against the individual ones of the at least one additional resource group attribute in the resource group object to determine if the copy services relationship may proceed.