I hadn't checked out that page yet, since it talked about performing the distributed install itself. I'd expect that kind of information to be on the other pages that talk about the distributed arch and planning for the distributed arch.
I'm sure it won't work without an external DB, I've just been hopeful that maybe if you hooked up a bunch of vcac appliances with local DBs that they'd be able to stay in sync...
Thanks for the sharp eyes.