Ok, thanks for the suggestion. I'm currently booting from USB, and my esxi data store is an SSD using the optical drive controller, so logically if the controllers are separate, but I don't know about physically- perhaps could try to pass it through.
I also have a P222 controller card that I could plug the 4HDDs to as well.
While logically I understand what you're saying, is there a guide somewhere that illustrates it?
Also, what did you mean by "you would ne vt-d"?
Lastly, I know 6.7 allows the assignment of raw drives- would that fix things? Again, I couldn't find much detail on that.