We are trying to create a system image that we can restore to a system using anaconda aka. kickstart. We would like this to be accomplished using one process where the client boots from the anaconda menu and choses kickstart config that restores the machine specific image back onto the system. Any help even to point me to some documentation would be great. We have tried using a tar file that a post install script extract back onto the system but we are finding an overlap of system files and query results that have us worried. thanks

That's not really kickstart's purpose. You might be better off looking at Clonezilla if you want to restore images. If you just want to re-install to a fixed specification, kickstart is the place to look for that functionality alright.

I think I need to add information. We are looking for a process that is native, to RHEL, that we can make an iso image of a system and use anaconda/kickstart to recover the system from that iso image when needed. We would make a kickstart config file available via pxe that should point to the iso. We want to avoid the time it takes to recover the system and save time on all the special software installation steps for the products that are outside of yum and rpms.

I understand that, but by enforcing a requirement for a RHEL/CentOS native tool, you are making work for yourself.

If your requirement is to restore from a disk image, the simplest way is to ignore kickstart altogether and let clonezilla provide the PXE kernel, which will restore the image.

You don't mention if this is a virtual host or bare-metal.
A more complicated, but entirely RHEL native way is to set up a Cobbler server and, using Cobbler and koan, create a backup image, which you can then recover to in the event of failure. Example here. This scenario is designed for virtual deployments, but Cobbler is flexible, maybe it can be persuaded to work with hardware too.