Hosting a domain controller in the cloud

We have clients that are having a rough time coming up with the the resources to purchase new server(s) to replace their aging Window Server 2003 system(s).  My company has been testing the ability to host a Primary Domain Controller in our Data center and then having a Read Only Domain Controller at there office to do Offline DNS, DHCP, and authentication.  My test environment is located 50 mile away for the Data center at my place of employment.  I have my Primary Domain Controller(PDC) running Windows 2012 R2.  I stage a new Windows 2012 R2 Domain within our Private Cloud.  I then turned off the domain at my office and had it authenticate across the VPN.  It worked great.  There was about a 3-4 seconds delay in log in times.

So my company is coming up with a pricing scheme to sell to our current and future clients.

So here is what is all involved.

1. You need to setup a VPN connection between to two locations.  Client site and Data Center
2. You need to acquire physical equipment.  Our environment is VMware with a fiber channel SAN, so acquiring resources is not needed.
3. You will then need a small desktop/server to run as a RODC.  You need enough room to run active directory and DFS file storage if necessary.

As of today we have a formal agreement for the first clients.  As we stage and put this server into production I will continue posting about the setup and other issue that we find along the way.

Feel free to comment.