1. A computing system, comprising: a converged infrastructure comprising: a plurality of application server nodes; a plurality of storage media nodes, wherein each storage media node comprises a plurality of persistent storage elements to store data; and a plurality of network switch nodes configured to enable communication between the application server nodes and the storage media nodes, and to enable communication between the storage media nodes; wherein the converged infrastructure comprises a plurality of compute elements which are distributed over and which reside on the application server nodes, the network switch nodes, and the storage media nodes, wherein the compute elements comprise processor devices; and wherein the distributed compute elements residing on the application server nodes, the network switch nodes, and the storage media nodes are configured to collaboratively control and coordinate (i) network interface functions for implementing a converged communications network and (ii) data plane functions and control plane functions associated with data storage functions for implementing a distributed data storage system for storing data to and accessing data from one or more persistent storage elements of the storage media nodes, within the converged infrastructure; wherein at least one network switch node comprises a dedicated processor device that is configured to perform data storage functions for storing data to and accessing data from the persistent storage elements of the storage media nodes, wherein the data storage functions performed by the dedicated processor device comprise generating and managing metadata with regard to data that is stored in the storage media nodes, wherein the metadata is utilized by the distributed compute elements to perform the data storage functions and enable extensible scaling of the distributed data storage system within the converged infrastructure.