title: Best practice for creating SQL Server databases for a data warehouse
body: <p>I'm about to create 2 new SQL Server databases for our data warehouse: </p>
  
  <ol>
  <li><strong>Datawarehouse</strong> - where the data is stored</li>
  <li><strong>Datawarehouse_Stage</strong> - where the ETL is done</li>
  </ol>
  
  <p>I'm expecting both databases to be able 30GB and grow about 5GB per year. They probably will not get bigger than 80GB (when we'll start to archive). </p>
  
  <p>I'm trying to decide what settings I should use when creating these databases: </p>
  
  <ul>
  <li>what should the initial size be?</li>
  <li>...and should I increase the database size straight after creating it?</li>
  <li>what should the auto-growth settings be?</li>
  </ul>
  
  <p>I'm after any best practice advice on creating those databases.</p>
  
  <p>UPDATE: the reason I suggest increasing the database size straight after creating it, because you can't shrink a database to less than its initial size.</p>