Shell Programming and Scripting

I'm trying to write a script that in the end will from one central location hop to a bunch of servers and then run a series of ping tests. The thing is, the list of devices that needs to be pinged is going to be different for each server. So what I want to do is be able to do is read through the list of servers at the central location, set up the logic to figure out what machines it needs to ping, and then execute a single ssh session with a here statement. The issue I have is, I'm not sure how to create a list of commands, and then run through them.

So what I have right now is:

Code:

#!/bin/bash

head -1 blade | while read i; do
    i=($i)
    case "${i%b*}" in
        r01)
                        #LOGIC TO DETERMINE WHAT SERVERS NEED TO BE PINGED GOES HERE
            ssh -T r01b01  <<EOF
                        #ACTUAL COMMANDS GO HERE INSTEAD OF SINGLE PING COMMAND BELOW
ping -q -c 1 -w 1 10.250.19.5 > /dev/null && echo "success" || echo "failed"
EOF
        ;;
        esac
    done

Doing the logic is fine, I can hack my way through that. What I can't figure out is how to pass a list of commands based on that logic through a single ssh connection.

Any ideas?