samba - Mar 2003 - Samba BDC in a subnet of a Windows NT4.0 domain?

Hi, I've been playing with samba/the idea of Samba as a server for a remote
location on our network.  
How we're setup right now is this:
Windows NT 4.0 PDC/BDC/Member Server (hosting Exchange server).
The PDC has file sharing for our projects directory and needs to be
accessible by employees everywhere.  the BDC has SQL server for accounting
purposes and also needs to be accessible from everywhere.
The local LAN is a 10.100.100.xxx address (the PDC being 10.100.100.1)
we have a remote location on 10.100.102.xxx (an office in a different city,
about a 1000 km's away)
They're connected by VPN (hardware firewall) with IPSEC
the remote workstations include 2 winXP machines, and 2 Win98 SE machines.
 right now, they login to our local PDC through the VPN, work on files
remotely, etc.  it's a bit slow and I'd like to help speed up what I
can!
 
Would Samba be able to function as an authentication server for the remote
location as a BDC in our existing Domain- using the PDC's user/password
list?
And what exactly would be the most effective configuration for this in terms
of samba install options/encryption/authentication modules/synchronization?
(assuming Redhat distribution, probably 8.0 unless it's got some flaws that
wouldn't allow for this)
I'm not asking for a big walk through on every little step to configure
samba, i'm asking which modules/files would best fill the role.
Samba 2.2.7a --with PAM?  Should LDAP be used?  etc.  also, i stumbled
across this on microsofts site by accident (hahaha!)


http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;324542
<http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;324542>  - is
this
something that could work/should be used?  

Thanks for any thoughts/opinions/info.  If you know of a good cookbook howto
to get me started for configuring this specific type of machine, that would
be great, although I have made some headway on my own someone always knows
something you don't!

I find the existing samba documentation somewhat confusing to navigate, it
makes me jump from file to file/module to module and my head starts
spinning.  "Do i need this? do i need that?  etc"  But it IS
educational!

Thanks in advance for any assistance!

Jason Sheldon