Is this best practice to create a local stratum? Cant the Miner connect directly to the pool?
If your chosen pool still allows you to use the old network protocol then you can mine directly. If the pool only has stratum protocol servers then you either need to use Cgminer or Bfgminer as a proxy or set up a dedicated stratum mining proxy.
Check out this helpful guide:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=352658