A SAN management software program controls access to resources in the SAN by associating individual users with one or more administration domains. A user that is associated with an administration domain that includes a port of a SAN switch can configure or otherwise access the port but is restricted from accessing ports outside of that administration domain. Likewise, access to other sub-fabric resources can be restricted and allowed to individual users and users in specific roles or groups. In this manner, the SAN administrative user has very specific control over which users can access which SAN resources and what level of access these users are granted.