Palo Alto Networks VM-Series Firewall suddenly restarts unexpectedly due to disk I/O performance

• VM-Series Firewall suddenly restarts unexpectedly. The restart may happen repeatedly.
• The system may have crashinfo and core files of crashed processes.
• /var/log/messages in tech-support file shows the following messages with trace logs.

/var/log/messages: 

Aug 21 15:33:15 mgmt kernel: INFO: task kjournald:654 blocked for more than 120 seconds.
Aug 21 15:33:15 mgmt kernel: "echo 0 > /proc/sys/kernel/hung_task_timeout_secs" disables this message.
Aug 21 15:33:15 mgmt kernel: kjournald D 0000000000000000 0 654 2 0x00000000
Aug 21 15:33:15 mgmt kernel: ffff8803eaeb7c68 0000000000000046 ffff8803eaeb7fd8 ffff8803eaeb7fd8
Aug 21 15:33:15 mgmt kernel: 0000000000012340 ffff8803fb3a0cc0 ffff8803eaeb7ba8 ffffffff8120f2c9
Aug 21 15:33:15 mgmt kernel: ffff8803eaeb7bb8 ffffffff8108759a ffff8803eaeb7bc8 ffffffff81089d0a
Aug 21 15:33:15 mgmt kernel: Call Trace:
Aug 21 15:33:15 mgmt kernel: [<ffffffff8120f2c9>] ? radix_tree_lookup+0xb/0xd
Aug 21 15:33:15 mgmt kernel: [<ffffffff8108759a>] ? irq_to_desc+0x12/0x14
Aug 21 15:33:15 mgmt kernel: [<ffffffff81089d0a>] ? irq_get_irq_data+0x9/0xb
Aug 21 15:33:15 mgmt kernel: [<ffffffff812935cd>] ? info_for_irq+0x9/0x18
Aug 21 15:33:15 mgmt kernel: [<ffffffff810087c8>] ? xen_clocksource_read+0x20/0x22
Aug 21 15:33:15 mgmt kernel: [<ffffffff810087d3>] ? xen_clocksource_get_cycles+0x9/0xb
Aug 21 15:33:56 mgmt kernel: [<ffffffff8106da7f>] ? ktime_get_ts+0x4f/0xb5
Aug 21 15:33:56 mgmt kernel: [<ffffffff810087c8>] ? xen_clocksource_read+0x20/0x22
Aug 21 15:33:56 mgmt kernel: [<ffffffff810087d3>] ? xen_clocksource_get_cycles+0x9/0xb
Aug 21 15:33:56 mgmt kernel: [<ffffffff81116694>] ? generic_block_bmap+0x40/0x40
Aug 21 15:33:56 mgmt kernel: [<ffffffff814a1458>] schedule+0x64/0x66
Aug 21 15:33:56 mgmt kernel: [<ffffffff814a1642>] io_schedule+0x8a/0xc8
Aug 21 15:33:56 mgmt kernel: [<ffffffff8111669d>] sleep_on_buffer+0x9/0xd
Aug 21 15:33:56 mgmt kernel: [<ffffffff8149fcd1>] __wait_on_bit+0x41/0x71
Aug 21 15:33:56 mgmt kernel: [<ffffffff8149fd77>] out_of_line_wait_on_bit+0x76/0x81
Aug 21 15:33:56 mgmt kernel: [<ffffffff81116694>] ? generic_block_bmap+0x40/0x40
Aug 21 15:33:56 mgmt kernel: [<ffffffff810596da>] ? autoremove_wake_function+0x2f/0x2f
Aug 21 15:33:56 mgmt kernel: [<ffffffff81116735>] __wait_on_buffer+0x21/0x23
Aug 21 15:33:56 mgmt kernel: [<ffffffff811a4109>] journal_commit_transaction+0x94a/0xf4d
Aug 21 15:33:56 mgmt kernel: [<ffffffff811a752a>] kjournald+0xd7/0x23f
Aug 21 15:33:56 mgmt kernel: [<ffffffff810596ab>] ? wake_up_bit+0x25/0x25
Aug 21 15:33:56 mgmt kernel: [<ffffffff811a7453>] ? commit_timeout+0xb/0xb
Aug 21 15:33:56 mgmt kernel: [<ffffffff81058c8a>] kthread+0xb5/0xbd
Aug 21 15:33:56 mgmt kernel: [<ffffffff81058bd5>] ? kthread_create_on_node+0x10e/0x10e
Aug 21 15:33:56 mgmt kernel: [<ffffffff814a8c98>] ret_from_fork+0x58/0x90
Aug 21 15:33:56 mgmt kernel: [<ffffffff81058bd5>] ? kthread_create_on_node+0x10e/0x10e

/var/log/messages: 

Aug 21 15:39:55 mgmt shutdown[31324]: shutting down for system reboot
Aug 21 15:39:55 mgmt init: Switching to runlevel: 6
Aug 21 15:40:38 mgmt mountd[1892]: Caught signal 15, un-registering and exiting.
Aug 21 15:40:42 mgmt kernel: nfsd: last server has exited, flushing export cache
Aug 21 15:40:42 mgmt xinetd[1858]: Exiting...
Aug 21 15:40:42 mgmt rpc.statd[1734]: Caught signal 15, un-registering and exiting.
Aug 21 15:40:42 mgmt kernel: Kernel logging (proc) stopped.

• Palo Alto Networks VM-Series Firewall

1. Check the host disk logs and check if it has any errors or warnings. If there is, please fix the disk environment situation.
2. Change the host to a new different host, and check if it works.
3. If the environment is a public cloud, please ask the disk environment situation to the cloud provider to check if it has any errors or failures.
4. In some public cloud providers, just stop/start the VM instance will move the host it running and it may fix the problem.