I replaced the drives, installed the newest version of PVE, then restored all of my VMs from local USB backup. I had to reconfigure a number of things such as HDD pass through and other network settings, but in the end the migration was a success.
I have a workstation I use for video editing/vfx as well as gaming. Because of my work, I'm fortunate to have the latest high end GPUs and a 160" projector screen. I also have a few TVs in various rooms around the house.
Traditionally, if I want to watch something or play a video game, I have to go to the room with the jellyfin/plex/roku box to watch something and am limited to the work/gaming rig to play games. I can't run renders and game at the same time. Buying an entire new pc so I can do both is a massive waste of money. If I want to do a test screening of a video I'm working on to see how it displays on various devices, I have to transfer the file around to these devices. This is limiting and inefficient to me.
I want to be able to go to any screen in my house: my living room TV, my large projector in my studio room, my tablet, or even my phone and switch between:
my workstation display running on a Window 10 VM
my linux VM with youtube or jellyfin player I use as a daily driver
a fedora or Windows VM dedicated to gaming, maybe SteamOS
maybe a friend comes over for a LAN party and we both can game without having to set up a 2nd rig
I want to host an LLM or stablediffusion server without having to buy a new GPU with enough VRAM to run SDXL
I was in your position recently and decided to install PVE from scratch and restore VMs from backup.
I had a fairly complex PVE config so it took some additional work to get everything up and running. But it was absolutely worth it.