Improve suggests for NFS client mount options

doc/administration/high_availability/gitlab.md

@@ -22,18 +22,10 @@ is recommended over [NFS](nfs.md) wherever possible for improved performance.
    yum install nfs-utils nfs-utils-lib
    ```
 
-1. Specify the necessary NFS shares. Mounts are specified in
-   `/etc/fstab`. The exact contents of `/etc/fstab` will depend on how you chose
-   to configure your NFS server. See [NFS documentation](nfs.md) for the various
-   options. Here is an example snippet to add to `/etc/fstab`:
-
-   ```plaintext
-   10.1.0.1:/var/opt/gitlab/.ssh /var/opt/gitlab/.ssh nfs4 defaults,soft,rsize=1048576,wsize=1048576,noatime,nofail,lookupcache=positive 0 2
-   10.1.0.1:/var/opt/gitlab/gitlab-rails/uploads /var/opt/gitlab/gitlab-rails/uploads nfs4 defaults,soft,rsize=1048576,wsize=1048576,noatime,nofail,lookupcache=positive 0 2
-   10.1.0.1:/var/opt/gitlab/gitlab-rails/shared /var/opt/gitlab/gitlab-rails/shared nfs4 defaults,soft,rsize=1048576,wsize=1048576,noatime,nofail,lookupcache=positive 0 2
-   10.1.0.1:/var/opt/gitlab/gitlab-ci/builds /var/opt/gitlab/gitlab-ci/builds nfs4 defaults,soft,rsize=1048576,wsize=1048576,noatime,nofail,lookupcache=positive 0 2
-   10.1.0.1:/var/opt/gitlab/git-data /var/opt/gitlab/git-data nfs4 defaults,soft,rsize=1048576,wsize=1048576,noatime,nofail,lookupcache=positive 0 2
-   ```
+1. Specify the necessary NFS exports in `/etc/fstab`.
+   The exact contents of `/etc/fstab` will depend on how you chose
+   to configure your NFS server. See [NFS documentation](nfs.md#nfs-client-mount-options)
+   for examples and the various options.
 
 1. Create the shared directories. These may be different depending on your NFS
    mount locations.

doc/administration/high_availability/nfs.md

@@ -148,12 +148,15 @@ For supported database architecture, please see our documentation on
 
 ## NFS Client mount options
 
-Below is an example of an NFS mount point defined in `/etc/fstab` we use on
-GitLab.com:
-
-```plaintext
-10.1.1.1:/var/opt/gitlab/git-data /var/opt/gitlab/git-data nfs4 defaults,soft,rsize=1048576,wsize=1048576,noatime,nofail,lookupcache=positive 0 2
-```
+Here is an example snippet to add to `/etc/fstab`:
+
+   ```plaintext
+   10.1.0.1:/var/opt/gitlab/.ssh /var/opt/gitlab/.ssh nfs4 defaults,vers=4.1,hard,rsize=1048576,wsize=1048576,noatime,nofail,lookupcache=positive 0 2
+   10.1.0.1:/var/opt/gitlab/gitlab-rails/uploads /var/opt/gitlab/gitlab-rails/uploads nfs4 defaults,vers=4.1,hard,rsize=1048576,wsize=1048576,noatime,nofail,lookupcache=positive 0 2
+   10.1.0.1:/var/opt/gitlab/gitlab-rails/shared /var/opt/gitlab/gitlab-rails/shared nfs4 defaults,vers=4.1,hard,rsize=1048576,wsize=1048576,noatime,nofail,lookupcache=positive 0 2
+   10.1.0.1:/var/opt/gitlab/gitlab-ci/builds /var/opt/gitlab/gitlab-ci/builds nfs4 defaults,vers=4.1,hard,rsize=1048576,wsize=1048576,noatime,nofail,lookupcache=positive 0 2
+   10.1.0.1:/var/opt/gitlab/git-data /var/opt/gitlab/git-data nfs4 defaults,vers=4.1,hard,rsize=1048576,wsize=1048576,noatime,nofail,lookupcache=positive 0 2
+   ```
 
 Note there are several options that you should consider using:
 
@@ -162,6 +165,42 @@ Note there are several options that you should consider using:
 | `vers=4.1` |NFS v4.1 should be used instead of v4.0 because there is a Linux [NFS client bug in v4.0](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitaly/issues/1339) that can cause significant problems due to stale data.
 | `nofail` | Don't halt boot process waiting for this mount to become available
 | `lookupcache=positive` | Tells the NFS client to honor `positive` cache results but invalidates any `negative` cache results. Negative cache results cause problems with Git. Specifically, a `git push` can fail to register uniformly across all NFS clients. The negative cache causes the clients to 'remember' that the files did not exist previously.
+| `hard` | Instead of `soft`. [Further details](#soft-mount-option).
+
+### soft mount option
+
+We recommend that you use `hard` in your mount options, unless you have a specific
+reason to use `soft`.
+
+On GitLab.com, we use `soft` because there were times when we had NFS servers
+reboot and `soft` improved availability, but everyone's infrastructure is different.
+If your NFS is provided by on-premise storage arrays with redundant controllers,
+for example, you shouldn't need to worry about NFS server availability.
+
+The NFS man page states:
+
+> "soft" timeout can cause silent data corruption in certain cases
+
+Read the [Linux man page](https://linux.die.net/man/5/nfs) to understand the difference,
+and if you do use `soft`, ensure that you've taken steps to mitigate the risks.
+
+If you experience behaviour that might have been caused by
+writes to disk on the NFS server not occurring, such as commits going missing,
+use the `hard` option, because (from the man page):
+
+> use the soft option only when client responsiveness is more important than data integrity
+
+Other vendors make similar recommendations, including
+[SAP](http://wiki.scn.sap.com/wiki/x/PARnFQ) and NetApp's
+[knowledge base](https://kb.netapp.com/app/answers/answer_view/a_id/1004893/~/hard-mount-vs-soft-mount-),
+they highlight that if the NFS client driver caches data, `soft` means there is no certainty if
+writes by GitLab are actually on disk.
+
+Mount points set with the option `hard` may not perform as well, and if the
+NFS server goes down, `hard` will cause processes to hang when interacting with
+the mount point. Use `SIGKILL` (`kill -9`) to deal with hung processes.
+The `intr` option
+[stopped working in the 2.6 kernel](https://access.redhat.com/solutions/157873).
 
 ## A single NFS mount
 

doc/administration/high_availability/nfs_host_client_setup.md

@@ -94,10 +94,11 @@ Edit `/etc/fstab` on client as below to mount the remote shares automatically at
 Note that GitLab requires advisory file locking, which is only supported natively in
 NFS version 4. NFSv3 also supports locking as long as Linux Kernel 2.6.5+ is used.
 We recommend using version 4 and do not specifically test NFSv3.
+See [NFS documentation](nfs.md#nfs-client-mount-options) for guidance on mount options.
 
 ```text
 #/etc/fstab
-165.227.159.85:/home       /nfs/home      nfs4 defaults,soft,rsize=1048576,wsize=1048576,noatime,nofail,lookupcache=positive 0 2
+10.0.0.1:/nfs/home  /nfs/home  nfs4 defaults,hard,vers=4.1,rsize=1048576,wsize=1048576,noatime,nofail,lookupcache=positive 0 2
 ```
 
 Reboot the client and confirm that the mount point is mounted automatically.