Cloud hosting for windows domain controller, possible?

We currently host our own domain controller (small company) locally on dedicated h/w. However to mitigate disaster we're considering the use of virtualisation and cloud hosting.

One thought is

Virtual primary domain controller hosted in the cloud + a local (secondary) virtualised server running in the office as a cache?

Is this possible or should I consider something else? We're happy to pay for the decent hosting and DR but this is really out of my experience.

Solution 1:

If security isn't a huge concern, I would recommend using Amazon's EC2 instance. If bandwidth is an issue, you could very easily use the /async switch for replication. Joe Field has an excellent article on how to host Windows Domain in the Cloud

Solution 2:

In theory you could configure Samba as a domain controller under GNU/Linux. With the advantage being that there are many cheap GNU/Linux Virtual Private Server (VPS) providers.

This topic interests me since I am looking to do the same thing for a windows network at a small office. I'll post back here if I find anything of interest.