Automating, Building, Testing and Deploying to Production Server

[yoda]

Hi Guys,
I've been used to deploying code to the production server by checking
out of subversion and manually sorting out any kinks. (yes, I know, it
sounds primitive)

I realize I'm losing so much time I could spend more productively. I'd
therefore like to know the different approaches you guys employ to
deploy builds from your staging servers (or laptops:) to the production
server in an automated repeatable safe manner.

How do you automate the process?
What tools do you use and how?
What documentation is available for the various tools?
What is the best, easiest, most automated, method that provides robust
versioning and easy rollback?