I have used several 10GbE switches not on the officially supported matrix - however you need to ensure for iSCSI that the switch supports full duplex flow control and jumbo packets.

If you are doing FCoE - I would stick entirely to the support matrix.

Dell's 8100-series PowerConnects weren't too badly priced last I saw, compared to the price of a Compellent SAN they are actually fairly inexpensive.

I've worked with the Netgear's 8-port 10Gbit switches with an Equallogic SAN and I wasn't impressed, but that setup was budget sensitive (entry level Equallogic, which costs a lot less than a Compellent SAN does).

Then way I look at it is like this; if you cannot afford a proper 10Gbit switch, consider 1Gbit iSCSI for now, or a lower end SAN solution so that you can then afford proper switches.

Dell has a very open support policy with respect to SAN networking for both the Compellent SC-Series and EqualLogic PS-Series products.  We will always provide full contractual support for the SAN solution regardless of the 3rd party components that may be used in the SAN solution.  

That being said, we cannot guarantee that - from a performance perspective - every switch or hba can meet your expectations without testing that device.  Also, understand that every switch vendor targets one or more "markets" for their products and builds switches designed for those markets.  NetGear is not known as an Enterprise switch vendor and thus may build products with certain feature/function or performance characteristics that are not suitable for the Enterprise market...a market that both EqualLogic and Compellent storage solutions *are* targeted for.

Netgear, I am sure meets all of the IEEE and IETF standards required to function with the SC-Series products.

Please review our Dell Storage Support Policy statement that is included in our Dell Storage Compatibility Matrix for more details.

en.community.dell.com/.../5069.dell-storage-compatibility-matrix.aspx