"Unable to acquire a lock on the policy" red bar error occurs in DLP Enforce Console

Products

• Data Loss Prevention
• Data Loss Prevention Enforce

Issue/Introduction

During an attempt to "Edit" a policy which has a shared component (IDM, EDM, EMDI....) in DLP Enforce console, a red bar error is encountered with the message "Unable to acquire a lock on the policy".  This error may be transient. 

Environment

DLP 15.7 MP3 and DLP 15.8 GA release

Cause

Most common causes of this issue include:

1. Another user is editing a policy that has shared component with the policy being edited..  DLP policy authoring is limited to one session per user.  When another user edits a policy, the policy and most of its components are locked from further edits until it is saved by the user which is editing.  The upcoming DLP 15.8 MP2 release will remove this shared component limitation.

2. The browser session which triggered the policy edit has hung or crashed or was closed forcefully, causing the lock on policy edit to extend without active user involvement, since the web session did not send save action to end the policy lock.

Resolution

If no other active edit sessions are modifying the policy, wait until the session lock naturally expires for the policy edit, or perform a restart of the DLP Enforce Manager service.  The natural policy session lock timer expires in 30 minutes.

Contact Broadcom Support if the message occurs with widespread impact for multiple policies  and users.