Using OD to authenticate users to an AD domain

I have a question that I'm hoping someone has had experience with. We have a rather large XSAN system that I have been tasked to administer. We have integrated this system into our rather large Active Directory domain. Because of the extensive topology of the AD domain, we have had intermittant problems with OS X clients losing their binding to AD and therefore locking users out of the machines. I spoke with one of the XSAN techs who helped install the system and he indicated there was a way to use an OD master bound to AD to authenticate AD users without the clients themselves being bound to the OD domain. I have set up such a test xserve but I have not been successful as of yet. All of the information I have been able to find only describes binding the clients to BOTH AD and OD and simply using OD for management. Is it possible to authenticate to AD through an OD master without binding the client to AD at all? If so, how is this accomplished?