PAN-OS 11.1.16, Unable to connect to VPN Portal or Gateway, winhttpObj, error!

[josh]

We have a NGFW hosted by Rackspace in the US. Any new attempt to connect to the Global Protect gateway portal fails. We can ping and tracert to the I.P. address and domain of the gateway, but whenever we go to connect via the Global Protect VPN client or we attempt to go to the web portal via browser the connection fails with an EMPTY_RESPONSE. One team member that was connected to the VPN prior to this issue remained connected, but all new connections fail. 

Everything I see points to the web service on the FW that handles SSL handshakes for the VPN being the problem. We have not changed anything on our end, its been weeks since Rackspace performed an update on their end to the FW. Numerous articles point to memory leaks or other issues occasionally occurring in those web services. 

https://knowledgebase.paloaltonetworks.com/KCSArticleDetail?id=kA10g000000POIHCA4&lang=en_US

This KB article says restarting these services can be helpful and usually don't impact production. Can anyone tell me if I'm grasping at straws or if restarting the gpsvc services on the firewall would be a good next step? 

Rackspace has opened a ticket with the PA TAC vendor support team, but we have work to do on our servers and cannot connect. This issue has been going for almost a week now. Unfortunately I don't have the log files from our troubleshooting to share. 

Thank you,

Josh
 

[reaper]

Check if your server certificate (in the TLS profile for globalprotect) is still valid, and its intermediate/CA are loaded and valid).

Restarting the service sounds like a solid next step.