Convert .ova and import it on Proxmox KVM virtualization

Let’s start uploading the exported ova file to the proxmox server. Extract the OVA file:

tar -xvf *.ova

This should output a couple of files from the OVA container, it should include an OVF file, which is the VM Defenition file, and a VMDK file, which is the actual hard disk image. Again, this may take a while.

Convert the vmdk to a Proxmox compatible qcow2 file:

qemu-img convert -f vmdk myvirtual-disk1.vmdk  -O qcow2 qcowdisk.qcow2

We now need to get the image into a VM with some hardware so that we can begin to use it. This is where things get tricky – the OVF file is not compatible with Proxmox and needs to be manually understood. The principle here is we are going to use the Proxmox web GUI to create a VM and replace the empty disk image which is created with our recently converted qcow2 image.

You can use vi to open the OVF file and understand some of the basic settings which are required for the VM. Open the OVF file and look for the following XML tags:

• OperatingSystemSection
• VirtualHardwareSection
• Network
• StorageControllers

You should be able to get a rough idea of the requirements for the KVM. In the Proxmox web GUI, click on Create VM and create a VM which meets the requirements of the image you converted. Make sure that you select qcow2 for the disk format. After clicking Finish an empty VM will be created – in this example I used local storage and VMID 101 so the disk images are stored in /var/lib/vz/images/101.

Copy the previously converted qcow2 image over the existing image – be sure to overwrite the existing image otherwise your image will not be used and KVM will try to start with a blank, empty image.

mv /tmp/qcowdisk.qcow2 /var/lib/vz/image/101/vm-101-disk-1.qcow2

Thats it – you can now start up the image from the Proxmox web GUI.

Src:
http://www.binaryheartbeat.net/2016/05/importing-ova-container-into-proxmox.html
https://www.jamescoyle.net/how-to/1218-upload-ova-to-proxmox-kvm