very slow VM startup

[rowers]

I have an Ubuntu VM, running under VMware Fusion 12.3.3

The VM takes about 3 minutes to get to where it starts to boot linux.

Inspecting the vmware.log file shows that it's spending the time here, in the DISKLIB-LIB section.  

What is it doing?  It's as if it's reading every byte on my boot disk.

Any ideas for eliminating or speeding this up?

2022-03-24T23:23:51.324Z In(05) vmx VNET: MACVNetLinkStateTimerHandler: 'ethernet0' state from 1 to 5.

2022-03-24T23:23:52.753Z In(05) vmx DISKLIB-LIB   : numIOs = 50000 numMergedIOs = 0 numSplitIOs = 0

2022-03-24T23:23:58.208Z In(05) vmx DISKLIB-LIB   : numIOs = 100000 numMergedIOs = 0 numSplitIOs = 0

2022-03-24T23:24:03.808Z In(05) vmx DISKLIB-LIB   : numIOs = 150000 numMergedIOs = 0 numSplitIOs = 0

2022-03-24T23:24:09.348Z In(05) vmx DISKLIB-LIB   : numIOs = 200000 numMergedIOs = 0 numSplitIOs = 0

2022-03-24T23:24:14.899Z In(05) vmx DISKLIB-LIB   : numIOs = 250000 numMergedIOs = 0 numSplitIOs = 0

2022-03-24T23:24:20.429Z In(05) vmx DISKLIB-LIB   : numIOs = 300000 numMergedIOs = 0 numSplitIOs = 0

2022-03-24T23:24:25.856Z In(05) vmx DISKLIB-LIB   : numIOs = 350000 numMergedIOs = 0 numSplitIOs = 0

2022-03-24T23:24:31.368Z In(05) vmx DISKLIB-LIB   : numIOs = 400000 numMergedIOs = 0 numSplitIOs = 0

2022-03-24T23:24:36.792Z In(05) vmx DISKLIB-LIB   : numIOs = 450000 numMergedIOs = 0 numSplitIOs = 0

2022-03-24T23:24:42.223Z In(05) vmx DISKLIB-LIB   : numIOs = 500000 numMergedIOs = 0 numSplitIOs = 0

2022-03-24T23:24:47.776Z In(05) vmx DISKLIB-LIB   : numIOs = 550000 numMergedIOs = 0 numSplitIOs = 0

2022-03-24T23:24:53.310Z In(05) vmx DISKLIB-LIB   : numIOs = 600000 numMergedIOs = 0 numSplitIOs = 0

2022-03-24T23:24:58.984Z In(05) vmx DISKLIB-LIB   : numIOs = 650000 numMergedIOs = 0 numSplitIOs = 0

2022-03-24T23:25:04.642Z In(05) vmx DISKLIB-LIB   : numIOs = 700000 numMergedIOs = 0 numSplitIOs = 0

2022-03-24T23:25:10.415Z In(05) vmx DISKLIB-LIB   : numIOs = 750000 numMergedIOs = 0 numSplitIOs = 0

2022-03-24T23:25:16.132Z In(05) vmx DISKLIB-LIB   : numIOs = 800000 numMergedIOs = 0 numSplitIOs = 0

2022-03-24T23:25:22.208Z In(05) vmx DISKLIB-LIB   : numIOs = 850000 numMergedIOs = 0 numSplitIOs = 0

2022-03-24T23:25:27.887Z In(05) vmx DISKLIB-LIB   : numIOs = 900000 numMergedIOs = 0 numSplitIOs = 0

2022-03-24T23:25:33.541Z In(05) vmx DISKLIB-LIB   : numIOs = 950000 numMergedIOs = 0 numSplitIOs = 0

2022-03-24T23:25:39.186Z In(05) vmx DISKLIB-LIB   : numIOs = 1000000 numMergedIOs = 0 numSplitIOs = 0

2022-03-24T23:25:44.848Z In(05) vmx DISKLIB-LIB   : numIOs = 1050000 numMergedIOs = 0 numSplitIOs = 0

2022-03-24T23:25:50.508Z In(05) vmx DISKLIB-LIB   : numIOs = 1100000 numMergedIOs = 0 numSplitIOs = 0

2022-03-24T23:25:56.218Z In(05) vmx DISKLIB-LIB   : numIOs = 1150000 numMergedIOs = 0 numSplitIOs = 0

2022-03-24T23:26:01.890Z In(05) vmx DISKLIB-LIB   : numIOs = 1200000 numMergedIOs = 0 numSplitIOs = 0

2022-03-24T23:26:07.529Z In(05) vmx DISKLIB-LIB   : numIOs = 1250000 numMergedIOs = 0 numSplitIOs = 0

2022-03-24T23:26:13.178Z In(05) svga SVGA disabling SVGA

[rowers]

Nevermind.

I found that it was actually spending the time in grub, and it was loading the ignited, which it turned out was very large.  The BIOS based disk reads are apparently not very fast.

[rowers]

Sorry, autocorrect.

It was loading the initial Ramdisk (initrd)

[continuum]

Loading initrd should take justt a few seconds.
Read the vmware.log - maybe your vmdks need  repair ?
Maybe you assigned too much RAM or too many vCPUs ?
And most trivial - maybe you have lots of active snapshots ?

Ulli