now that i am running my own nameservers, i imagine while the machine reboots that email will bounce etc.?
can i be sure it will automatically restart named if the machine is rebooted as per my escalation procedure?
thanks

DNS as well as many other services should automatically start when you reboot your machine, but it's not too difficult to check or restart manually from SSH if you need to.

You can generally look in /etc/rc2.d and see what will start up with the system.

The restarting of named has nothing to do with the escalation procedure. It depends on whether it is included in the start up procedure. If you are using a control panel such as Cpanel then you be sure it would autorestart when it is rebooted either through the soft or hard reboot.