If I've understood your issue, consider the following:

use strict;
use warnings;

my ( $host, %hash );

while (<DATA>) {
    chomp;
    next if /Folder/ or not $_;

    my ( $type, $name ) = /(\S+)\s*:\s*(\S+)/;

    if ( $type =~ "Host" ) {
        $host = $name;
    }
    elsif ( $type =~ "VM" ) {
        my $guest = $name;

        push @{ $hash{$host} }, $guest unless $guest ~~ @{ $hash{$host
+} };
    }
}

print "Key '$_' has " . (scalar @{ $hash{$_} }) . " values.\n" for key
+s %hash;


__DATA__
*******************Folder North***************
Folder : North
   Folder : Lab
      Host : host42016
         VM : host42229
         VM : host42235
         VM : host42236
         VM : host42237
         VM : host42238
         VM : host42239
         VM : host42240
         VM : host42241
         VM : host42242
         VM : host42252
      Host : host42049
         VM : host42361
         VM : host42362
         VM : host42363
         VM : host42364
         VM : host42365
         VM : host42366
         VM : host42367
         VM : host42368
         VM : host42369
         VM : host42370

*******************Folder South***************
Folder : South
   Folder : Staging
      Host : host42124
         VM : host42248
         VM : host42249
         VM : host42250
         VM : host42230
         VM : host42251
         VM : host42243
         VM : host42244
         VM : host42245
         VM : host42246
         VM : host42247
      Host : host42125
         VM : host42299
         VM : host42300
         VM : host42301
         VM : host42302
         VM : host42303
         VM : host42304
         VM : host42305
         VM : host42306
         VM : host42307
         VM : host42308

[download]

Output:

Key 'host42049' has 10 values.
Key 'host42125' has 10 values.
Key 'host42016' has 10 values.
Key 'host42124' has 10 values.

[download]

Only a few modifications have been made to your code.

Am not sure I understand removing duplicate hosts. If hosts are hash keys, there will be no duplicates. Duplicate VM's are avoided by first checking--via Perl's smart matching (v5.10+)--if the VM is already in the array, and the captured VM is pushed onto the array only if it's not already there.

Hope this helps!

Update: Anonymous Monk's suggestion of using a hash of hashes (HoH) is an excellent one, as it would be faster, and would work on older Perl versions which don't support smart matching. Here's a HoH version that would operate on the same data set as above, and would generate the same output:

use strict;
use warnings;

my ( $host, %hash );

while (<DATA>) {
    chomp;
    next if /Folder/ or not $_;

    my ( $type, $name ) = /(\S+)\s*:\s*(\S+)/;

    if ( $type =~ "Host" ) {
        $host = $name;
    }
    elsif ( $type =~ "VM" ) {
        my $guest = $name;
        $hash{$host}{$guest}++;
    }
}

print "Key '$_' has " . ( values %{ $hash{$_} } ) . " values.\n" for k
+eys %hash;

[download]

In reply to Re: Parsing text file into a hash with multiple values per key by Kenosis
in thread Parsing text file into a hash with multiple values per key by dayton

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