Interesting.. I did the same thing here creating a Perl/Ant build and deploy framework. Especially when it came down to manipulating the descriptors it was the best tool for the job. It's been working like clockwork for the last couple of years

I was involved in the zvmOS/linux/WebSphere project testing here.. (Putting Linux/WebSphere on the mainframe). It's not ready quite yet, but I'm thinking if they'd have gone with a 2.6 linux kernel it would have been a winner. This is where utilization of an appserver starts to make sense. Popping Appservers on line (on demand) just by imaging a VM allows all the encapsulation pay off. By virtue of just changing a few parameters you've scaled on (or off) your entire delivery tier. I don't think you could just do that with mod-perl applications without having to dink with a ton of properties to allow inter communication with the newly created Server.