Is it set as bootable? I have seen some QCOWs not be read correctly by ovirt. In that case I would take an OVA file and convert it manually to QCOW using the CLI, sometimes the QCOW works only with IDE from what I have seen. My way is somewhat long but usually works for me: Upload to Disk page in GUI and attach to a premade VM -- If it fails use CLI: CLI: tar -xvf <image-name>.ova it will extract to .vmdk files OR if you have a VMDK already qemu-img convert <image-name>-disk001.vmdk <image-name>.qcow2 -O qcow2 Once completed, you should verify that the file is successfully a QEMU QCOW2 Image. file <image-name>.qcow2 You can then download over winscp and upload to the GUI Disks page and attach to a VM -- Sometimes if you have errors on boot you need to choose a different CPU or set HDD to IDE or virtIO-Sata.