My backup server is up, running, and storing backup data for all of my computers plus backing up the data from this site.  I have a nice script that will run most of the backups from the backup server itself, with the exception of my main PC (with all my Vista problems, I did not want to add an SSH server).  To back up my main computer (the new one), I can run a backup script from it that will push the data over to the backup server.  The only task left is to add the scripts to the Windows Task Scheduler so the backups run automatically.

All of the programs I am using in my setup are free.  The only costs associated with the setup are for the computer (in my case, I had to buy a new hard drive because the old one was too small) and a Windows license.  If, however, you wanted avoid that expense, you could easily install a Linux distribution and my setup would work just as well (probably better).

Rather than bore any non-technical readers with my setup, I wrote up a nice long tutorial on how to make your own centralized server using freeware software.  It is still pretty rough and does not have content in the section for automating the backup on a schedule, but it has enough information to get backups running on-demand.  Let me know if it’s useful to anyone out there.