I've always been a fan of IPC::Open3 for things like this. With it, you can catch and manipulate STDIN, STDOUT, and STDERR, and it makes things like ping, ssh, rsync and rlogin type-tasks very easy.

You could also look into Net::Ping, Net::SSH, File::Rsync, and File::Remote, depending on exactly what it is you're trying to do on that remote system.

`Backticks` are almost never what you want to use, the most-obvious reason being the glaring security implications.