Foolproof disk device name in fstab

[andmalc <andmalc@gmail.com>]

I have a Jessie VPS with external disks attached.  The disks are specified
in /etc/fstab with traditional /dev/sdXX naming.  I recently made changes to the disks that made a device name invalid but didn't notice. When I rebooted, the disk couldn't be found and boot halted in rescue mode.

My question is: how can I specify devices in fstab so if they can't be found boot proceeds proceeds normally instead of halting?  Would mounting with systemd with the 'device-timeout' option as described here be a good way?

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/fstab#Automount_with_systemd