Are Blade Servers good for non virtual systems?

[makyuz]

Hi All,

This questions comes from a complete blade-server-dummy, so please don't mind if my questions are just stupid.

Our customer has some space issues with their server rooms and want to swap their racks and servers with blade servers as much as they can. Naturally they also ask if our apps can run on blade servers.

Our apps run on RHEL, some of them use a special kernel called PAE (physical address extension), and some of them are used with high transaction numbers and they are vital platforms for the customer. By the way, we don't want our apps to run on virtual servers. 

I've heard that RHEL runs with lower performance on AMD CPUs. Is that right? Do blade servers can handle high transaction capasities? Are they good for non-virtual systems?

And can you tell me what can be an equivalent blade server to HP's ProLiant D380 servers?

Thank you,
Mehmet.