Total Newbie To SQL Server

I'm in a slightly sticky situation. I recently got a job I interviewed for as a business analyst/programmer. I know quite a bit of VB 6.0 and SQL language, also enough access to build a decent database as a backend for my apps. I've recently received a 4 yr CIS degree, so I know a little about everything. I told them very clearly three times in the interview that I'd never built a SQL Server DB, but they must not have cared about that. They need someone who can program, do some DB work, and also do some business analysis. I was the best fit they could find.

After working with the group a few days, I figured out they need a data warehouse and marts to do some historical analysis, and eventually data mining and trend analysis, etc. I think they said they'd like to have that by the end of next year.

What I need now is one or two really great books to get started with, and a small synopsis on what I'm going to need as far as dev software and server specifics to get this thing off the ground. The first thing they would like to see is simply enough tables to dump data into from 4 or 5 different DBs, from which they can pull data for analysis whenever they need to do so. The total rows for this DB will be around 170mil, but with just a few measures in each row. Microsoft spreadsheet says I should expect about 5gig per year of data.

So I'm freaking out because I know ziltch about SQL Server, what tools and server set up I'm going to need, and the more I read, the less it sounds like "Oh it's not that big of a deal. It's easy", as a few friends told me.

Help!