To this day the only compact irreducible complete Ricci-flat Riemannian metrics arise as manifolds with special or exceptional holonomy. This pair of talks will give an introduction to special and exceptional holonomy metrics and the resulting constructions of both compact and noncompact Ricci-flat manifolds. We will indicate how ideas from Riemannian convergence theory have provided motivation for the currently known (and possibly for future) constructions of metrics with exceptional holonomy