@olivierlambert
So much for my memory.....
XCP-ng center always exports a snapshot as a template. The menu item is called that and the xva files made always re-import as templates. The equivalent xe function is xe snapshot-export-to-template which does the same thing. The only way to export the snapshot as a VM is to set the is-a-template parameter to false then export with xe vm-export. Once that's been done it looks impossible to set is-a-template back to true. Using either xe vm-param-set or xe snapshot-param-set and trying to set is-a-template back to true gives an error "VM_IS_SNAPSHOT"
I remember one of the backup scripts, NAUBackup/VMBackup if you're familiar with it, doing this and was never quite sure why until now. Looking through its code, it's creating a snapshot, setting is-a-template to false, exporting it as a VM, then deleting the snapshot in order to make an xva file backup while keeping the VM live. I'm not familiar with backups made by XO but I'm guessing you must be doing them in a similar fashion.
Edit: I just did some more testing and discovered that as soon as I set the is-a-template parameter to false on a snapshot made by XCP-ng Center or xe vm-snapshot, it starts showing up in the xsconsole "All VMs" list and in xe vm-list commands just as snapshots created by XO do. In addition, they're showing up both on xe vm-list and xe snapshot-list. Fresh snapshots made with is-a-template still set to true show up in xe snapshot-list but do not show up in xe vm-list or xe template-list. They do show up in the list of templates available in XCP-ng Center when creating a new VM but those with is-a-template set to false do not.
This is starting to smell to me more like a bug in xe or XAPI and possibly XCP-ng center as well but definitely in xe or XAPI. Is there any way to look into what's going on there?
