Running My First Bitcoin Node – My Experience & Setup Guide

Hey everyone
Just wanted to share something small but meanigful

I recently finished setting up my first Bitcoin node pruned running on a VPS with ubuntu and honestly it feels great to finally be doing my part to support the network
I know it's not a full-blown Raspberry Pi setup with blinking lights or some massive archive node but I'm working with limited disk space on a VPS and still wanted to contribute

Why I Did It
For a while now I've been learing about how Bitcoin really works not just from a price angle but from the actual infrastructure side I realized I've been trusting explorers and other people's node for everything
that is not what Bitcoin is supposed to be about
I don't have a powerful PC or spare gear lying around but i do have access to a cheap VPS so I thought why not run a pruned node? It won't store the full chain but it still fully validates everything and helps decentralize the network
And it turns out that it was way easier than I expected

My Setup
Ubuntu VPS (2 core 4GB ram 60GB ssd)
Bitcoin Core Pruned
Pruned size I set it around 10gb
installed from source vie the official Github

The sync took a bit of time around 2-3 days but the VPS handled it fine
Now it is up and running 24/7 quietly doing its job verifying blocks and transactions No GUI just logs and terminal magic

What I Learned

you do not need full disk space to run a node a pruned node works just fine for verifying your own transactions and helping the network
you can run a Bitcoin core on a VPS with very modest specs
you don't need to be a dev or hardcore Linux wizard just follow some well writen guides and you'll be fine
Most importantly you don't have to wait until everything is perfect to contribute

I followed a Cherry Servers guide and used prune in my bitcoin.conf which keeps the disk use down to 6-7 GB while still fully validating
anyway just wanted to share
it's a small step but it feels good to finally be part of the infrastructure not just a passive user

wanted to add a pic but I dont know why its not working for me

Code:

bitcoin-cli getblockchaininfo
{
  "chain": "main",
  "blocks": 908717,
  "headers": 908717,
  "bestblockhash": "000000000000000000017d5fe2e70c15f3320b43fa0ba0ec89931923f48221b6",
  "difficulty": 127620086886391.8,
  "mediantime": 1754389740,
  "verificationprogress": 0.9999964267354117,
  "initialblockdownload": false,
  "chainwork": "0000000000000000000000000000000000000000d7caf4fad84a5fd10af33cfc",
  "size_on_disk": 655106454,
  "pruned": true,
  "pruneheight": 908375,
  "automatic_pruning": true,
  "prune_target_size": 576716800,
  "softforks": {

Anyone else running a pruned Node ?
Curious how others are doing it are you using pruning too or did you go with full storage?