Apparently, the team behind the CentOS 8 decided to split the rsync functionality to two packages – one for the client-side and for the server-side, despite the binary rsync is only one and offers the client-size and server-side.
So there two packages in CentOS 8:

1. rsync – provides the client-side and server-side as usual
2. rsync-daemon – provides configuration example file and the systemd to start it as a service.

So if you wonder where is your rsync service after installing the rsync package under CentOS 8 you must install additional package “rsync-daemon”.

Of course, you may just create anywhere “rsyncd.conf” (the best place for the configuration file is in /etc, but could be placed anywhere with “–config=PATH/FILE” option) file and start the daemon as usual with “–daemon” option included to have the rsync server-side up and running.

rsync --daemon --config=/etc/rsyncd.conf

Just create yourself the configuration “/etc/rsyncd.conf” file.

Install the rsync program – the client and the daemon

dnf install rsync

Install the configuration and systemd files

dnf install rsync-daemon

rsync and rsync-daemon files

The files included in the two packages:

[root@srv ~]# dnf repoquery -l rsync-daemon
Last metadata expiration check: 0:33:02 ago on Wed 22 Jan 2020 02:57:06 PM UTC.
/etc/rsyncd.conf
/etc/sysconfig/rsyncd
/usr/lib/systemd/system/rsyncd.service
/usr/lib/systemd/system/rsyncd.socket
/usr/lib/systemd/system/rsyncd@.service
/usr/share/man/man5/rsyncd.conf.5.gz
[root@srv ~]# dnf repoquery -l rsync
Last metadata expiration check: 0:33:06 ago on Wed 22 Jan 2020 02:57:06 PM UTC.
/usr/bin/rsync
/usr/lib/.build-id
/usr/lib/.build-id/6e
/usr/lib/.build-id/6e/bdbf5032a966a6293cea003621ba766ab36ff1
/usr/share/doc/rsync
/usr/share/doc/rsync/NEWS
/usr/share/doc/rsync/OLDNEWS
/usr/share/doc/rsync/README
/usr/share/doc/rsync/support
/usr/share/doc/rsync/support/Makefile
/usr/share/doc/rsync/support/atomic-rsync
/usr/share/doc/rsync/support/cvs2includes
/usr/share/doc/rsync/support/deny-rsync
/usr/share/doc/rsync/support/file-attr-restore
/usr/share/doc/rsync/support/files-to-excludes
/usr/share/doc/rsync/support/git-set-file-times
/usr/share/doc/rsync/support/instant-rsyncd
/usr/share/doc/rsync/support/logfilter
/usr/share/doc/rsync/support/lsh
/usr/share/doc/rsync/support/lsh.sh
/usr/share/doc/rsync/support/mapfrom
/usr/share/doc/rsync/support/mapto
/usr/share/doc/rsync/support/mnt-excl
/usr/share/doc/rsync/support/munge-symlinks
/usr/share/doc/rsync/support/rrsync
/usr/share/doc/rsync/support/rsync-no-vanished
/usr/share/doc/rsync/support/rsync-slash-strip
/usr/share/doc/rsync/support/rsyncstats
/usr/share/doc/rsync/support/savetransfer.c
/usr/share/doc/rsync/tech_report.tex
/usr/share/licenses/rsync
/usr/share/licenses/rsync/COPYING
/usr/share/man/man1/rsync.1.gz