Kibana should recognize when monitoring data is missing from the ES master node

[PhaedrusTheGreek]

Kibana version: 7.7

Elasticsearch version: 7.7

There has been a long standing issue in stack monitoring where when the currently elected master is not sending monitoring data for whatever reason, Kibana fails to recognize that it has any monitoring data. This experience is confusing for a user starting out, as they may set up metricbeat on a single node and expect to see something in Kibana. The user's troubleshooting workflow is expected to be that they check to ensure the monitoring index exists, which they do, and it does.

It would be great if Kibana could recognize that it has something, but not everything it needs, and to recommend a course of action to the user.

Also this known issue is not documented in some guides, e.g. here, so I will file a docs issue as well.

[elasticmachine]

Pinging @elastic/stack-monitoring (Team:Monitoring)

[PhaedrusTheGreek]

Docs PR: Add a note indicating Kibana will not recognize monitoring data unless it has something from the active master #61793

[PhaedrusTheGreek]

Still hitting this. Updated to use stronger wording