Yes, that is right, it would require a new service running on the host machines.
That said, I do think it depends on what you consider important, and what your experience has been in the past. I used to value simplicity above all, so reducing the number of moving pieces was important to my designs. For the purpose of this discussion let's count a service as a single moving piece.
But over time I've decided that I also value reliability. Operators don't necessarily want simplicity. What they want is reliability and ease-of-use. Simplicity sometimes helps you get there, but not always.
So, yes, rqlite means another service. But I put a lot of emphasis on reliability when it comes to rqlite, and ease-of-operation. Because often when folks want something "simple" what they really want is "something that just works, works really well, and which I don't have to think about". SQLite certainly meets that requirement, that is true.
rqlite is a great project! Sometimes I have been wondering, how hard would it be to embed it into web server process, like nginx or apache, as a module.
That said, I do think it depends on what you consider important, and what your experience has been in the past. I used to value simplicity above all, so reducing the number of moving pieces was important to my designs. For the purpose of this discussion let's count a service as a single moving piece.
But over time I've decided that I also value reliability. Operators don't necessarily want simplicity. What they want is reliability and ease-of-use. Simplicity sometimes helps you get there, but not always.
So, yes, rqlite means another service. But I put a lot of emphasis on reliability when it comes to rqlite, and ease-of-operation. Because often when folks want something "simple" what they really want is "something that just works, works really well, and which I don't have to think about". SQLite certainly meets that requirement, that is true.