Some time back, Daniel was kind enough to implement what I find is a massively useful feature: --mark support in the util-vserver tools. This allows operating on vservers in groups based on their mark values The implications are that you can insert multiple marks (one per line) in: /etc/vservers/xxx/apps/init/mark Then any vserver command which can work on multiple vservers can be persuaded to operate on arbitrary groups of vservers An example. I use gentoo, so I will use the "vupdateworld" command which does something like a "yum -a", effects are irrelevant, just watch the syntax: - Update all WWW servers: vupdateworld --mark www - Update all WWW & DNS servers (comma separation is "or"): vupdateworld --mark www,dns - Update all WWW & DNS servers, but *don't* update my base template images (multiple --mark is "and", "!" is "not". Note you might need to escape the "!") vupdateworld --mark www,dns --mark \!template - Update WWW/DNS, not the templates, and only the running vservers (ok "running" is implicit here, but the example is useful) vupdateworld --mark dns,www --mark \!template --running All of the commands which iterate are using the "vsomething" command under the bonnet, so look there for syntax and fuller options. The vsomething command runs a command for every vserver that matches, the syntax is something like: vsomething [cmd_to_run] -- [your_marks] -- [args_to_cmd] this runs, for each vserver: cmd_to_run vserver_name args_to_cmd - so for example to start all template servers (say to update them) vsomething vserver -- --mark template -- start - run "hostname" on all the servers in the example above, WWW/DNS, no templates vsomething vserver --mark dns,www --mark \!template --running -- exec hostname Using these groups makes bulk operations on vservers dramatically simpler and management is very much simpler. I would encourage groupings based on server use, eg DNS or WWW (assuming you have very granular server builds!). Additionally I mark special features, eg "UPGRADE_CAREFULLY", "TEMPLATE" so that I can exclude certain servers from bulk operations I hope others find this as helpful as I do - many thanks to Daniel (and of course Herbert!) Perhaps someone might find a spot for some documentation based on the above for the wiki? Thanks Ed W