Archive Database

Hi Everybody,
I'm working on a new database of 25GB in size with an expected 25% growth per year and an estimated 1000 TPS. Since I need to retain the old data for atleast 7 years. I would like to know whether I should Archive the database or is there any other means of storing the data, which will be used just to generate reports. Also pl. do let me know the advantages/disadvantages.

Thanks
KishoreYou said 7 years of total retention. But how old should the data be in your production environment? If 7 years as well, - you're looking at 200GB worth of data (I am yet to see an app that survives that long, but it's possible ;))|||archiving is dependent on your query requirements.
if your working set is getdate() - 6 months then archive
but if you report CONSISTENTLY all the way back. there obviously is no need to archive.
250GB is nothing to sneeze at but you can easily manage a db of that size with sql server 2k or any othe enterprise class db for that matter.

archiving really causes more headaches than it is worth.|||In production we need atleast 1 year old data and the rest can be archived which will be used to generate reports|||If 1 year is a working set then I'd recommed to have a reporting server where the archived data would be transferred to. You can also set this server as a linked server in your prod environment, and create additional views/stored procedures to have an easier access to the archived data without having to explicitly connect to a different server.