What about standalone installer for ASP.NET MVC 4? Does it require VS installed on server?

As an alternative you could install ASP.NET MVC 4 on your development environment using Web Platform installer or as NuGet packages and then just include all required assemblies when you publish your site to production server.

Yes, adding deployable assemblies (in vs.) would solve any problem I have with missing dlls, but what about the references to local paths in EpiserFramework.config (C:\Program Files (x86)\EPiServer\CMS\7.0.586.1\...)? Do I have to manually copy these files to server to get the edit/admin ui to be shown correctly? I mean, without running the installer these folder and files aren't created.

There doesn't seem to be an installer for MVC 4 that doesn't require VS no. Normally, for any MVC website, this isn't a problem as you would add these using the "build deployable assemblies" option is VS, but since the Episerver installer requires it I am unsure how to correctly install the CMS, Framework files ect. on the server.

Right, but what about this installer: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=30683

I managed to install ASP.NET MVC 4 on server where VS 2010/2012 is not istalled.

Sure? 

System requirements

Supported operating systems: Windows 7, Windows Server 2003 R2 (32-Bit x86), Windows Server 2003 R2 x64 editions, Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 2, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Vista Service Pack 2, Windows XP Service Pack 3

PowerShell 2.0, .NET 4, ASP.NET 4, and Visual Studio 2010 SP1 or Visual Web Developer 2010 SP1 are required to use this feature

Doesn't work, setup failes with this message: "This product requires VWD 2010 SP1".

I tried on virtual machine, it has Windows SDK 7, VS 2008, web platform installer, but VS 2010 is not installed.

Well that's hardly a production server type of machine. Do you have something more similar to the spec. described in http://world.episerver.com/Documentation/Items/System-Requirements/EPiServer-CMS/Version-7/System-Requirements---EPiServer-7-CMS/ that you could test it on? This is quite the show stopper.

FYI: Our webserver environment is Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 with IIS 7,5 and Microsoft .NET Framework 4.0 installed.

Second try:

Maybe you can install WebPI on the server and use that to install mvc4?

Tried that as well. A search for "MVC 4" yields one relevant result; "ASP.NET MVC 4 with Langauge Packs (August 2012)". This too has a visual studio dependency.

The full MVC4 installation (http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=30683) appears to install just fine without Visual Studio present. I tested this on a 2008 Server with no trace of anything before the installation of the prerequisites: .NET4, Powershell2. (I have not verified what happens with the web platform installer.)

I believe the mention of Visual Studio in the system requirements refers to some specific feature(s) for development use.

@Erik it was definitely not a production type of server. nevertheless, standalone installation of ASP.NET MVC 4 was successfully completed when there was no VS 2010/1012 installed.

Ok, so this is how I «solved» this problem. I uninstalled any old remnants of previous failed attempts to install MVC 4, downloaded all windows updates and ran the MVC 4 installer again, using Web platform installer. Installed Episerver then uninstalled all references to Visual Studio that was installed with MVC 4.

Easiest would be to use the Full installer that Håkan and Dimitri linked to that doesn't install anything with visual studio when installing MVC 4.