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We are currently planning an Exchange Server SE upgrade and the setup is blocked at readiness checks due to a missing prerequisite:
IIS URL Rewrite Module 2.1 (x64)
The official Microsoft documentation confirms that Exchange Server setup (September 2021 CU and later, including Exchange SE) requires IIS URL Rewrite Module 2.1 to be installed prior to setup:
However, we are facing the following issues:
This prerequisite availability issue is currently a hard blocker for Exchange Server SE upgrades.
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Answer accepted by question author
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Having your Exchange Server SE upgrade completely halted just because a prerequisite download link is dead is incredibly frustrating. I fully understand the critical situation you are in: your setup is blocked at the readiness checks due to the missing IIS URL Rewrite Module 2.1 (x64), and the official download page on iis.net is currently unreachable, leaving you without a supported way to proceed.
After researching this issue, I can address your specific questions and provide a crucial heads-up for when you do obtain the installer:
At this time, there have been no public announcements or official communications from Microsoft regarding moving or temporarily mirroring the installer to a more reliable endpoint like download.microsoft.com. The iis.net page remains the sole official source. It is highly unlikely that this dependency will be removed or embedded in future Exchange SE updates. Microsoft's official documentation notes that if the URL Rewrite Module is uninstalled after setup, it directly leads to an unresponsive ECP (Exchange Control Panel) and OWA. This indicates it is a core architectural requirement, rather than a temporary dependency.
Please note that as a forum moderator, I do not have backend access to Microsoft's web hosting environments or the authority to manually provide you with a secure, official .msi file. So, the most effective way to resolve this is to create a support ticket via the Microsoft Services Hub. The specialized Exchange support engineers there have the ability to either provide you with a secure, official internal link to the installer or escalate the broken iis.net routing directly to the Microsoft web infrastructure team for an emergency fix.
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