Hi Polanskiman,
It sounds like they are debating an issue where they are using RDM, which is exaclty what I wanted to avoid, I'm actually using FPT (so full passthrough of PCI device).
This should enable the VM to have direct access to the PCI HW address, leaving it completely out of the ESX setup (you can't see it in storage overview / adapters as FPT is set as active).
It's basically why I moved to a separate controller (my mainboard has 6 SATA connectors, so using in baremetal, I would not have taken this route).
as you can see from the SSH output, I can actually read the smartctl data in DSM when logged on.
(by the way, my 10 port sata controller in FPT gave me proper SMART data back in DSM, sadly it was an unreliable one, so needed to change...)
Regards!