Cannot install Application Request Routing on Windows Server 2019 IIS 10

Question

Howdy!

So I need to transition an internal project to be public. During development we used Caddy as a web server to work with our Go developed API. Everything worked fine.

Now it's time to go public so I search for how to do a reverse proxy. I find out that in addition to the URL rewrite module I already use I need something called Microsoft Application Request Routing. I search about it and find loads of documentation on version 1 (unavailable to download) and 2 (also unavailable). I find next to nothing about the only available version, 3, which has a download page full of talk of a no longer usable Web Platform Installer. I download requestRouter_amd64.msi and run it and it asks for confirms and all that and then I go back into IIS Manager and no icon. I reboot. No icon. I uninstall, reboot, install again, still no icon.

I am on an up-to-date Windows 2019 Standard with IIS 10. Why reverse proxy requires an installer rather than a feature selection is as baffling as the same question about rewrites. These should all be part of the package. And if that is not to be the resource pages that refer to them should actually provide working information. Since they do not I am here.

This page points to the missing icon and functionality:

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/iis/extensions/url-rewrite-module/reverse-proxy-with-url-rewrite-v2-and-application-request-routing

This is the download page with both the installer that doesn't add anything to IIS manager and the one that doesn't work because Platform Installer is dead:

https://www.iis.net/downloads/microsoft/application-request-routing

Here is my rewrite rule which does not get rewritten:

<rule name="Reverse Proxy to Mint" stopProcessing="true">
	<match url="api/(.*)" />
	<action type="Rewrite" url="http://localhost:8080/{R:0}" logRewrittenUrl="true" />
</rule>

I tried it with the caret at the beginning of the match url to no avail.

Any advice on getting Application Request Routing to show up? On getting a reverse proxy to actually work?

Thanks,
Chris

Answer 1

@Chris Rowley

I download requestRouter_amd64.msi

I used a new machine to download and install arr, it works normally, there are 2 versions of Application Request Routing, the one you downloaded seems to be is the x64 version, please check if this seems to match your current pc's version, or you can also try downloading the x86 version.

Note: when you see Server Farms, it means that your Application Request Routing installation is successful, because the "Application Request Routing Cache" feature is only available on the root site.

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