Yes, you can. I know of a delivered project at one of the World's major financial institutions where their mainframe was replaced with x86 hardware. The system

Yes, you can. I know of a delivered project at one of the World's major financial institutions where their mainframe was replaced with x86 hardware. The system architecture was funky, but the hardware was commodity. Just because one x86 box doesn't have the required level of reliability doesn't mean you can't build a reliable system out of them.