Has anyone else in the IT field heard of, or used the term “Linux Bricks” when referring to a server that run a Linux OS? Of all the things i could complain about when someone mentions McKesson, my biggest pet peeve is that they call servers with a Linux OS a “brick” and i just grates me ever so much.
perhaps as one member of a linux server farm?
But it’s not just the AIX or RHES Clusters–it’s everything Linux including the standalone servers and servers that we bought thru them that don’t even do anything yet (after 5 years).
“don’t do anything yet (after 5 years)”??? definition of a computer brick (I’m in IT).
If we had computers that did nothing for 1 year, let alone 5 they’d be decommissioned and re-used or trashed.
Never had to deal with McKesson have you? 
I’m not in the IT field, but I’d be absolutely baffled by this. A brick is a computer that’s completely non-functional; something fried such that you can’t even turn it on, or it’s permanently locked up. You hear it all the time with video game consoles, like the 360 bricking.
Boxes I’ve heard. Linux box, Windows box, etc. I guess brick used for one server in a cluster, in the sense of a building block, makes some sense, but it’d take me a while to get used to it.
McKesson? Thank god, no. Heard enough about it to want to stay away. Really, tho - technology changes so fast, I can’t imagine shelving a server for 5 years awaiting implementation. You must be approaching hardware obsolescence on some components.
What happens when the server gets to end-of-service from a support perspective?
Yes, I had inferred that the term Linux Brick was meant to be condescending - it runs Linux, therefore is useless.
Since this isn’t the Pit i’m going to bite my tongue. I will let you know that one of the HP-UX servers sat in our loading dock for 3 years before McKesson even got around to assigning a rep to us to do anything with it. 3 years is enough time for HP’s warranty to expire. It has now been in the data center for over 1 year and we still are not live with the application. Who knows what will happen when a psu on it dies…
I’ve heard “brick” used in two ways.
The first is what others have said, basically to refer to something that is completely dead. “Yeah, the firmware update failed so now it’s a brick” for example.
The second is to refer to tiny little headless boxes as bricks. Tiny little headless computers (no monitor or keyboard) are commonly used to control stuff (embedded controllers), but they are also commonly used in server farms because of their small size and low power requirements.
Yeah, something is bricked when it’s firmware is not functioning.
But I might refer to something like this as a brick computer or a brick PC. They get built into - or bolted onto - all sorts of industrial equipment.
I have been at McKesson presentations where this term is used and they tend to reserve it for the middle layer of their 3-tiered architecture–essentially Linux-based blade computers which house the application logic.
I have always thought of it as a pet term from them, perhaps starting from a single individual in their development group in Westminster (CO; not MD) and sort of spreading out through the troops.
A couple non-McKesson examples:
http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Blade+or+brick,+take+your+pick:+both+increase+server+power,+not…-a0101613890
“Many organizations want to increase their server power without increasing or replacing their servers, especially at busy network edges serving firewalls and domain names. The industry has responded by developing server blades and bricks, which are modular servers with smaller form factors for dense processing power. Bricks are computing blocks made up of memory, processors, or storage operating.”
Yes, ‘brick’ is used in 2 ways. And with rather opposite meanings.
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Disparagingly: a dead, non-functional computer device.
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Respectfully: a constantly working, functional device that requires no maintenance, i.e. solid as a brick.
Generally, the term “Linux bricks” is used the second way, implying that a bank of servers running Linux is solid as a wall of bricks, and keeps on working without requiring constant maintenance. As opposed to machines running Windows Server, which do require frequent maintenance. You can easily start ‘Holy Wars’ among computer types with terms like this.
I’ve never heard the term in any other context than the ‘bricking’ of devices for example when trying to mod or upgrade the firmware.
But in this thread, it did strike me as seeming to mean the second of t-bonham’s meanings - a solid unit, the internal workings of which need little or no scrutiny or consideration - something you drop into place as a whole, and it works, and how it works is irrelevant.