You were on the right track. Try this:

#!/usr/bin/perl -l

use strict;
use warnings;

my $connectionStatus = "down";

my @listOfServers = qw(abc def lmn stu xyz);
foreach my $server ( @listOfServers ) {
    if ($connectionStatus eq 1) {
        print "Connection status is: 'up'";
        last;
    }
    elsif ($connectionStatus ne 1) {
        $server = $listOfServers[rand @listOfServers];
        print "Connection status is: 'down'";
        next unless $connectionStatus eq 1;
    }
    else {
        print "This is not going to work ...";
    }
}
[download]