[jpluscplusm]

I suggest you stay away from any of the elance/rentAcoder type sites, even if some of their customers seem to offer the skills you want at a price you find acceptable.

I gave them a try a couple of years ago to earn some beer money (I'm a sysadmin), and the rates that people went for were /so/ damn low that I literally couldn't see the point and just negotiated a raise instead :-)

I somehow doubt the genuine expertise and experience you'll derive most value from during a couple of hours session /won't/ be found at those low, low rates. Sysadmin are expensive ;-)

[byoung2]

I see that you are based in London. I'm guessing that's why your rates are much higher than the Elance crowd. There you'll find lots of sysadmins in India/Russia with rates from $5-10/hour. There's no way you or I could (or would want to) compete with that (I'm based in Los Angeles, US). I wouldn't doubt their expertise just because of the low rate...it's just that the cost of living is much lower there. That said, wherever you find someone, you would want to do a certain amount of vetting before you give them access to your server and network, and once you invest the time finding someone, you want to keep them around more than a few hours.