Cloud-init has become the bootstrap mechanism by choice by most cloud platforms including VMware.

I was not familiar with cloud-init so I learned this the hard way. If you find yourself having somewhat long boot times from either a Linux VM on vmware or other places you want to make sure that you have cloud-init disabled after your initial boot

To do this, do the following

# touch /etc/cloud/cloud-init.disabled

I know, I know this is stupid simple. Its just one of those things that you dont think about, but when your VMs boot slow or worse you have your network configs reset. You want to check this out. Otherwise, be ready for some fun times during your next patch/reboot cycle.

Cheers!