NMI:2540:LINT1 motherboard interupt - VSphere Passthrough Configured

[Kumdist]

I have a DL360 G7 running VMware VSphere Essentials connected to a P4300G2 Lefthand SAN.
My issue comes about when I would like to configure a HP Storage Works 1/8 G2 Tape Autoloader via passthrough mode to
a virtual machine running Windows Server 2008 R2.
Upon adding the device of type PCI and booting up the VM, the following error/warning appears on the ESX console
(....CPU0:4096)NMI:2540:LINT1 motherboard interupt (10 forwarded so far)
This is a hardware problem,please contact your hardware vendor.

After that, the esx server seems to hang. The Virtual Machine also hangs and doesnt boot into windows.
If I remove the PCI device added to the VM, issue doesnt appear.

Have I configured something incorrectly or is there something i need to configure?

[Kumdist]

The HP Storage Works 1/8 G2 Tape Autoloader is connected to a HP P212 Smart Array.Has anyone come across this issue?

[Kumdist]

I solved the issue by upgrading the BIOS and firmware of both the P212 Controller and the Proliant Server to the latest version.

With the hardware being on the latest HP firmware, the error disappeared.

I'm happy for now.