Mixed Contingency Sites

It seems as though most organizations will agree exactly on what a hot site and a cold site is, but the slight differences seem to lie in defining the warm site. While definitions will vary, the warm site generalizes to just being the middle-ground between being more than a cold site but less than a hot site; however, it is still fairly rigid in that the entire facility or room is set up in this way.

I was wondering if it would be possible to take a customized site approach to this, basically mixing the three types of sites into one facility. In one part of your site, all of your critical services and hardware would be running as if it were set up like a hot site. In the same room/facility, less critical services would be partially set up and ready for switch-over, much like a warm site. These would be services that can withstand being down for a few hours. Lastly, the remainder of this room/facility would be empty, acting as a cold site for all the remaining hardware, such as client workstations, that can be brought in as needed when implementing the DRP. The facility as a whole is neither a hot, warm, or cold site, but it is a mix of each.

It sounds like this would give the organization an incredible increase in flexibility. They could tailor it to cost exactly what will fit within their budget; if they need hot-site capabilities for some of their services, they would be able to allow that without having to pay for an all-out hot site for everything. It could be customized to fit their needs – maybe 25% of the room is set up as a hot site, 25% as a warm site, and the remaining 50% as a cold site.

Anyone have any thoughts on this? Is this actually done in the industry?