Building a Raw Data Warehouse in SQL Server 2005

I’m working on a project where we have to load over 700GB of raw data into a Data Warehouse to provide querying and analytics to the business unit. The choice was made to build this DW on an SQL Server 2005 3-node cluster with a 6TB network attached SAN. (The excess disk space was purchased in order to support ~1GB of nightly loads and 3 years of growth. I’ll cover more on that later.)

Over the next few posts I’ll discuss what I’ve learned through the challenges I’ve faced in this project. I think the most important pieces of the project can be broken out into these 5 topics:

1. Project scope, deliverables & documentation
2. Hardware
3. SQL Server 2005 configuration
4. Designing our ETL
5. Lessons learned

I hope that through my experiences (and mistakes) another team could save time on their project deadline. Because, hey, nobody likes working on weekends and losing time w/family and friends.
- Reagan

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