Any existing "Standard" settings will need to be re-imported into SpamFilter Enterprise using the "Copy file-based settings" button as shown in the screenshot below.

Administrators managing installations with several domains and/or complex filters may want to configure and test the upgrade from SpamFilter ISP to SpamFilter Enterprise before proceeding with the upgrade.

The following section describes a methodology that can be used to configure your SpamFilter Enterprise settings before actually performing the upgrade, keeping your current SpamFilter ISP running at all times, thereby eliminating any downtime.

SpamFilter Enterprise (SFE) was designed to share the same database used by SpamFilter ISP "Standard" (SFI). Furthermore, the "Enterprise" (SFE) tables are completely independent from the "Standard" (SFI) tables. This allows administrators to configure all the "Enterprise" settings without interfering with the "Standard" settings.

This means that, for example, you run a second instance of SpamFilter "standard", and perform the upgrade on this second instance, leaving your live production instance "as-is". Upgrading the second instance will create all the SFE-related tables in the live production database, but the two will not interfere with each other. You can then proceed to configure and test all your SFE settings without impacting your "live" SpamFilter installation.

After your SFE configuration is completed and are satisfied with its testing, the database will contain the correct settings that SFE will use. At this point, when you're ready, you can proceed to change the operating mode of your "live" copy of SFI to SFE, and restart SpamFilter. Your "live" SpamFilter will now immediately work by reading the SFE tables that you've already configured, and your upgrade downtime will be limited to the few seconds it takes to  stop and restart SpamFilter's service.

To proceed this way, you will then have to configure a second instance of SpamFilter. Since SpamFilter was developed so that all files reside in the installation directory, its configurations files are stored in text files, and no settings are stored in Windows' registry, this process is rather simple.

We suggest to copy your entire SpamFilter installation directory to a different location on your server. You do not need to stop SpamFilter during the copy process, as the only files that can be locked are possibly some temp files used to spool emails. You may want to exclude the "SpamFilter\logfiles" and the "SpamFilter\queue" directory from the copy process to save some time and avoid file sharing warnings.

In the sample below, we'll assume your "live" SpamFilter installation directory is:

c:\program files\SpamFilter

and that you will be installing your second temporary instance to:

c:\program files\SpamFilterEnterprise

After copying the directory, you will need to edit the only two configuration files and update any directory path they may contain. These two files are:

c:\program files\SpamFilterEnterprise\SpamFilter.ini

c:\program files\SpamFilterEnterprise\Domains\SFI\Filters.ini (this file may not exist if you have not upgrade to SpamFilter v3.5 yet).

In the SpamFilter.ini file, look for the line:

ListenPort=25

This is used to tell SpamFilter on which port to listen for incoming SMTP traffic. You will need to change it so your second instance won't interfere with your live one. Assuming your server is not using port 26, please change the entry above to something like (you can choose a different port if you wish):

ListenPort=26

After changing the port number, while not strictly necessary, as a precaution you may want to update the SpamFilter.ini and the Filters.ini files above so that they point to the blacklist/whitelist files in your new directory, not to those in your live directory. To do this, simply do a "search and replace" for all text in your SpamFilter.ini and  Filters.ini files, looking for the string "c:\program files\SpamFilter\" and replace it with "c:\program files\SpamFilterEnterprise\" (note the trailing "\").

Your second instance of SpamFilter is now configured exactly like your first one. You can now double-click on the "c:\program files\SpamFilterEnterprise\SpamFilter.exe" executable to start your second instance of SpamFilter. Please make sure there are no errors being displayed in the "Activity Log" tab upon startup, and if so, you may continue.

To upgrade this second instance to SpamFilter all you need to do is to:

 
You can now safely make any configuration changes to your second instance running SpamFilter Enterprise. All filter settings will be saved to the common database, without affecting your live installation. When you are ready to upgrade your live copy of SpamFilter, you will only have to execute the following steps (note that they are similar to the above steps, but are missing the italicized one above):