[Samba] Standalone Samba in a Win2008 DC environment, transition to samba

[Lin Pro]

There is a network with windows 2008 AD DC and about 9 workstations
plus some printers.
The plan is to decomission the Win 2008 DC and reuse the hardware for
other purposes at a later time (may be a samba AD DC, not important
now).
Samba Standalone is to take the role of a File and Print Server in
this existing network.

Questions:
1. Can Samba 4.5 "standalone" be started temporarily in parallel with
Win DC so that workstations can "see" it and copy files to the samba
server? (there are no plans to join the Win DC domain with samba
standalone).

2. The workstations are a mix of windows 7, 8, 8.1 and 10. Wil they
"see" the standalone server while still being under the Win DC
control?

3. Do the workstations have to somehow "leave" the Windows AD DC first
in order to start using the standalone samba server? If yes then how
one does do that?

Thanks for any hints
best regards
linforpros