Kyle,

Here's a few books that will help you.

- PERL CD Bookshelf 3.0 (searchable html)
- MySQL and Perl for the Web (Paul DuBois)

Mostly alot of reading CPAN modules, for SNMP/SSH.
I have spent the last 5 years developing tools 
you are mentioning in your question. I use mysql
as the backend database, after I found the limits
of flat files w/parallel processes a DB table
was the only way to store data.

How do you move a mountain? Once rock at a time.



Joe