[ale] Advice requested on samba solutions.

[David Millians]

Okay, this one I need some advice on.
I am grateful to work at a place that pushes open source. Unfortunately, Win Srv rears its ugly head every now and then. In this case, it's an access control system for buildings called Win Pak. It only communicates from client (custom) to server (win 2k8, of course) via RPC. So, it's got to have a domain, I suppose.
I suppose. We have multiple subnets inside a 10.x and I'd rather not have to setup samba boxes, virtual or not, for each subnet, especially since SLES doesn't have 4.0. 
I've used samba and AD together. I just don't know if:
A) anybody had just made something like this work with wins servers and lmhosts/hosts (it didn't the other day in limited testing)
B) anybody has gone the SMB 4.0 route and made a PDC and would swear they aren't ever going back

I can't think of a way to setup an old nt domain and make it work with 2k8.

Opinions wanted.