Error: Unable to connect to Elasticsearch when testing Kibana without production credentials

Goal

Determine whether Kibana can be configured to attempt an anonymous connection or fall back to a trial‑license mode when Elasticsearch credentials are missing during integration testing.

Constraints and uncertainty

In the current release, Kibana logs “Error: Unable to connect to Elasticsearch” and disables Discover, Visualize, and Dashboard UI features; no automatic retry or license‑fallback mechanism is documented. It is unclear if a hidden configuration flag exists to enable such behavior or if future releases plan to implement it.

Does Kibana provide a setting to enable anonymous or trial‑license fallback?

Is there a roadmap item that would allow credential‑less connection attempts in test environments?

How can integration tests be structured to verify connection‑less behavior without triggering the UI‑disable side effect?