virtio-blk is the best type to use for now, and I’ve used it on two separate installs for quite a while without issues. I think the Rockstor doc is severely out of date given the age of the screenshots!
Using virtio-scsi might allow things like SMART status to work if you can pass through the ‘LUN’ presented by the controller but I haven’t attempted this yet.
Passing through your SATA controller as a PCIe device would be even better and would allow SMART to work, but I’ve had stability problems every time I have attempted to do this. I think (unproven!) it’s because the AHCI (SATA) driver appears to be sensitive to how and when interrupts arrive.