[lsc]

You don't need a full time SysAdmin (much less two) until you have a /lot/ of hardware. Until then, you can get reasonably good contract SysAdmins for $100/hr to do your hardware stuff if you can't handle it. (your average independent hardware guy will contract out closer to $40-$70/hr, if you get him or her direct.)

Really, from what I've seen, most of the "cloud" providers only replace your hardware guy; you still need a SysAdmin (or a developer who can handle SysAdmin type stuff, which is probably what you want unless you are an infrastructure provider.)

It's like anything else; If you know the market and know what you are doing, you can save a lot of money by doing or supervising parts of it yourself. If you don't know what you are doing... well, sometimes it's best to find the person with the best reputation you can find and pay full price. I know I'm that way with accounting and legal services; I overpay because I don't know enough about the field to do or supervise any of the work myself.

But, I think that if you spend significant amounts of money on server infrastructure, it's probably worth your time to learn enough to get a better deal on things like contract labor.