Description of problem: Down there is the last email from Tomas Jelinek, the full thread can be found here: http://lists.ovirt.org/pipermail/users/2016-May/039622.html the thing is that: - if you create a VM from a template using the "clone" provisioning the VM is detached from the VM and is considered to be based on Blank - this is why the VM dialog shows blank and the REST returns blank - there has been a feature implemented (in 3.5 IIRC) which introduced the concept of "original template" - so we remember also what template it was cloned from (both name and ID) - it seems this particular field is not exposed to REST API, only to UI
The fix for this issue should be included in oVirt 4.1.0 beta 1 released on December 1st. If not included please move back to modified.
Verified with ovirt-engine-4.1.0-0.2.master.20161218144454.gitbaa2853.el7.centos.noarch. original_template attribute in vm API links to the original template where the original vm was created from. In a vm created from template the link is the same as template attribute. In cloned vms (tried clone from vm/template/snapshot) template attribute links to Blank template and original_template to the template of the source.