New machines - Dump and Restore -deploy

[Grant Peel]

Hi all,

I am hopeing someone knowledgeable will read and review my comments below
and point out any flaws....

It is time to deploy two more servers, which are en route to use. 2 Dell
750s single SCSI Duel NICS and regular Pent 4 / 512 MB etc etc.

I have spent the last year or so developing a server platform that I now
want to clone from a production box to the two new boxes.

I realize that when I do this I will need to delete alot of things from the
new box, but thats OK.

I intend to use Dump and Restore to completely copy the OS from the older
box to the two new ones.

Before I do this, I have three questions:

The current (older box) has only a 18 GB SATA drive on it. The two new
machines have 36 GB SCSI drives. So my question is, as long as the
partitions on the new box are names the same as the old box, and are at
least the same size, or bigger, dump and restore should work without
problems (?)

I will need to install a base OS on the new systems first, so I can
partition the drives and be able to connect tot the box, the second question
is, when I use restore, will it overwrite the kernel, if so, can I protect
the kernel from being overwritten?

The third question is, can I, should I, use rsyn insted of dum and restore?

Thanks,

-Grant