If you are trying to slurp the contents of DATA into a scalar variable, you could locally modify the $/ special variable:

use strict;
use warnings;
use Data::Dumper;

my $string;
{
    $/ = '';
    $string = <DATA>
}
$string =~ s/\n/ /g;

my @array = split /:\s+/, $string;
print Dumper( \@array );

__DATA__
VLAN     : 1           Status     : Enabled
FID      : 1           Name       : DEFAULT VLAN
VLAN Type: Permanent   Last change: 2009-08-31 16:48:45
 Egress Ports:
host.0.1
 Forbidden Egress Ports:
ge.3.39
 Untagged Ports:
host.0.1
[download]

Can you also show us what your hash should look like?