OD Server colocated

Hi all,

that’s my first post. At the company in which I was hired a month ago, there’s no directory service and I want to set one up and since >80& of the clients are macs, the OD on XServe is the natural solution. We’re also in the process of moving to a new building, and we’re taking the chance to colocate our mail and NAS servers, so we don’t need to setup a full server room there. My question is, if I put my Xserve outside my network, and perhaps I establish a permanent VPN between my cisco router and my xserve (so it gets a local IP), will my clients be affected OD-wise? And since we have two more locations and many people working from home, can they connect and authenticate on the OD server with its public ip (granted that I’ll open/nat the right ports at the colocation)? I was thinking about having a mac mini inside the network as OD replica, is it really necessary?

thanks a lot, I’m so excited to get my hands on my first Xserve!
alessandro