Yes, NFS handles server outages quite nicely, but I have found that this 
behaviour can be a little distro-dependant.
You could access NFS via an SSH Tunnel, then check the status of the 
tunnel every so often, and re-establish it as necessary. This might give 
you the best of both worlds.
Cheers,
Tim B.
-- 
OpenPilot - Open-source Marine Chart Plotter
Lead Developer
http://openpilot.sourceforge.net