Exclusions would work for us, but they don't appear to be working? I added "/root/*" to the exclusion list. Checked /etc/opt/eset/esets/esets.cfg and found "av_exclude = "/root/*::". Seems correct going off the main pages for esets.cfg. Restarted the esets_daemon (Not sure if necessary).
Ran: /opt/eset/esets/sbin/esets_scan /root
Summary of scan:
Total: files - 1399, objects 4694
Thought maybe it wasn't really scanning but counting. So performed an strace and it's indeed opening files to scan them.