Smart Array P212 turns into PMC 6G

[GordonFecyk]

I just in-place upgraded a ProLiant DL360 G7 from Windows Server 2008 R2 to 2012 R2; while it took a long time, it did finish.

I had a HPE 1x8 tape autoloader hooked up to this card, and it thankfully was the only device connected to it . After running a post-upgrade backup to tape, one of the backup jobs failed due to the tape device being offline. It turned out the device didn't go offline; the P212 did, and the hardware ID changed to 0x11F8/0x8010, that of a PMC Sierra 6 Gb SAS chip.

Power-cycling the server didn't help, nor did reseating the card. On power-up though, I noticed there was no longer an option ROM output for this card so there was no P212 BIOS to configure.

It also turned out there are no publicly available drivers for a PMC Sierra 6G SAS card; these are OEM chips sold from PMC to other vendors, including HPE apparently, and they tag them with their own hardware IDs. I also learned that PMC got acquired by Microsemi, and they don't have any stand-alone drivers. Just to make sure I wasn't going crazy, I removed the P212 and the "PMC 6G" card no longer appears in Device Manager.

I ended up putting back my backup of Server 2008 R2 because I had other problems with Backup Exec running on the upgraded server. I really doubt any Microsoft-supplied driver broke the card, though.

Is there some way to fix this card? I'm pretty sure warranty expired on it.