This section is from the "Version Control with Subversion" book, by Ben Collins-Sussman, Brian W. Fitzpatrick and C. Michael Pilato. Also available from Amazon: Version Control with Subversion.
Due largely to the simplicity of the overall design of the Subversion repository and the technologies on which it relies, creating and configuring a repository are fairly straightforward tasks. There are a few preliminary decisions you'll want to make, but the actual work involved in any given setup of a Subversion repository is pretty straightforward, tending towards mindless repetition if you find yourself setting up multiples of these things.
Some things you'll want to consider up front, though, are:
What data do you expect to live in your repository (or repositories), and how will that data be organized?
Where will your repository live, and how will it be accessed?
What types of access control and repository event reporting do you need?
Which of the available types of data store do you want to use?
In this section, we'll try to help you answer those questions.