Thanks for this excellent guide! I have been thinking about trying to become a witness. This guide will really help!
One question regarding the servers. On OVC, they have options for "Dedicated" and "Cloud". The cloud looks cheaper. Do you have any tips/suggestions on which server package is good to choose? (When I searched, the SP-30 under 'RAM Instances' with some additional HD space added in seems like the most affordable option to meet all the requiremets.)
I recommend you chat with some of the expert witnesses in the chat that have more experience running on such services. I'm using my own server, so my experience is a little different. The feeling I get is that if the CPU/RAM match, the bandwidth is really important - if throughput is inconsistent, you might miss blocks because you're too slow to respond. I'm sorry I can't help you more but I've only been running my node for 4 days and this article is the information I collected while doing it.
No problem. Thanks for your reply :)