Yup, the "manky" perl _script_s are still in use.. albeit heavily modifed from what you last saw...
I dont have a single customer here that will be doing an inplace upgrade.. at least until v3.1 comes out, and the read/write VMFS2.0 support is included.
As for consolidated backup.. have you actually seen that program, and how dodgy it actually is.. I would not recommend that for production for a long time yet.

email me:
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if ya want to chat dave..