NCS on OES11 SP1 needs eDir 8.8.7 or later. With a replica?

We have 3 replicas running, one NW 6.5SP8 and two OES2SP3 (eDir 8.8 SP6). These 3 servers are 32bit.

I'm about to test NCS in the lab (we've not used it before) and see on page 50 (4.6.3) of "clus_admin_lx.pdf" that eDir 8.8.7 is required for managing cluster objects.

Is it okay if we keep our existing replicas and not yet add a replica to our OES11SP1 servers?

I interpret that requirement as saying that we need to manage cluster objects using iManager on one of our OES11 SP1 servers which run eDir 8.8.7. No replica required, correct?

Thanks,
Marc